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TRUE GRANDEUR OP NATIONS : 



I 



ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE AUTHORITIES 



OF THE CITYOF BOSTON, 



litis 4, 1845. 



BY CHARLES SUMNER. 



! yet a nobler task awaits thy hand ! 

For what can War but endless War still breed? 

Till Truth and Right from. Violence be freed. 

Milton, Sonnet to Fairfax; 



THIRD EDITION. 

BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN PEACE SOCIETY, 
Depository No. 60^ Cornhill. 

1846. 



^ *•' 






■37^ 



Certainly, if all who look upon themselves as men, not so much from the shape 
of their bodies, as because they are endowed with reason, would listen awhile 
unto Christ's wholesome and peaceable decrees, and not, puffed up with arro- 
gance and conceit, rather believe their owne opinions than his admonitions; the 
whole world long ago (turning the use of iron into milder workes), should have 
lived in most quiet tranquillity, and have met together in a firme and indissoluble 
League of most safe Concord. — Arnobius, Adversvs Gentes, Lib. 1, p. 6. 



All high titles come hitherto from fighting. YourHerzog (Duke, Dux) is leader 
of armies; your Earl (Jarl) is strong man; Marshal, cavalry horse-shoer. A 
millennium, or reign of Peace, having been prophesied, and becoming daily more 
and more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting titles [also 
General, Admiral, Colonel, Captain] will cease to be palatable, and new and 
higher need to be devised? — Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. 



CITY OF BOSTON. 



In the Board of Aldermen, July 7, 1846. 
Resolved, That the thanks of this Board be presented in behalf of the City 
Council, to Charles Sumner, Esq., for the able and eloquent oration, delivered 
by him, before the Municipal Authorities of the City, at the recent celebration of 
the anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States}— ■ 
and that he be requested to furnish a copy for the press. 

Attest, S. F. McCLEARY, City Clerk. 



Boston, July 10, 1846. 
Sir: 

1 am grateful to my fellow-citizens for listening with such indulgence to 
sentiments which, I was sorry to believe, would not be in harmony with the 
opinions of all ; and I now place at your disposal a copy of the Oration, much of 
which was necessarily omitted in the delivery, on account of its length. 

In undertaking to present my views of the TVue Grandeur of Nations,! thought 
that I was most fitly fulfilling the trust that had been reposed in me, when I was 
selected as the voice of the City of Boston on the National Anniversary. 
Believing that, in the present state of Christian society, all war and all preparation 
for war, are irrational, unnecessary and inconsistent with that true greatness at 
which our Republic should aim, I deemed it my duty on that occasion to uphold 
that truth. I was also anxious that our country should seek the true glory, and 
what is higher than glory, the great good, of taking the lead in the disarming of 
the nations. 

Allow me to add, that I wish to be understood as restraining my opinions 
precisely within the limits which 1 have assigned them in these pages; and, 
particularly, to disclaim the suggestion which has been volunteered with regard 
to them, that Force may not be employed, under the sanction of Justice, in the 
conservation of the laws and of domestic quiet. All good men must unite in 
condemning, as barbarous and unchristian, the resort to external Force; in other 
words, to the arbitrament of War; to International Lynch Law; or the great 
Trial by Battle, to determine justice between nations. 

I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

CHARLES SUMNER. 
Thomas A. Davis, Esq., Mayor, ^c, S^c, 



f: 



ORATION. 



It is in obedience to an uninterrupted usage in our 
community, that, on this Sabbath of the Nation, we have all 
put aside the common cares of life, and seized a respite from 
the never-ending toils of labor, to meet in gladness and 
congratulation, mindful of the blessings transmitted from the 
Past, mindful also, I trust, of the duties to the Present and 
the Future. May he who now addresses you be enabled so 
to direct your minds, that you shall not seem to have lost a 
day ! 

All hearts first turn to the Fathers of the Republic. 
Their venerable forms rise before us, and we seem to behold 
them, in the procession of successive generations. They 
come from the frozen rock of Plymouth, from the wasted 
bands of Raleigh, from the Heavenly companionship of Wil- 
liam Penn, from the anxious councils of the Revolution, and 
from all those fields of sacrifice, on which, in obedience to 
the Spirit of their Age, they sealed their devotion to duty 
with their blood. They seem to speak to us, their children : 
" Cease to vaunt yourselves of what you do, and of what 
has been done for you. Learn to walk humbly, and to 
think meekly of yourselves. Cultivate habits of self-sacrifice 
and of devotion to duty. May our words be always in your 
minds, never aim at aught which is not kight, persuaded 
that without this, every possession and all knowledge will 
become an evil and a shame. Strive to increase the inherit- 
ance which we have bequeathed ; know, that, if we excel 
you in virtue, such a victory will be to us a mortification, 
while defeat will bring happiness. It is in this way, that 
you may conquer us. / Nothing is more shameful for a man, 



than to found his title to esteem, not on his own merits, but 
on the fame of his ancestors. ^ The glory of the Fathers is 
doubtless to their children a most precious treasure ; but to 
enjoy it without transmitting it to the next generation, and 
without adding to it yourselves, this is the height of imbecility. 
Following these counsels, when your days shall be finished 
on earth, you will come to join us, and we shall receive you 
as friends receive friends ; but if you neglect our words, 
expect no happy greeting then from us."* 

Honor to the memory of our Fathers ! May the turf lie 
gently on their sacred graves ! But let us not in words 
only, but in deeds also, testify our reverence for their name. 
Let us imitate what in them was lofty, pure and good ; let 
us from them learn to bear hardship and privation. Let us, 
who now reap in strength what they sowed in weakness, 
study to enhance the inheritance we have received. To do 
this, we must not fold our hands in slumber, nor abide content 
with the Past. To each generation is committed its peculiar 
task ; nor does the heart, which responds to the call of duty, 
find rest except in the world to come. 

Be ours, then, the task which, in the order of Providence, 
has been cast upon us ! And what is this task? How shall 
we best perform the part assigned to us ? What can we do 
to make our coming welcome to our Fathers in the skies, 
and to draw to our memory hereafter the homage of a grate- 
ful posterity ? How can we add to the inheritance we have 
received ? The answer to these questions cannot fail to 
interest all minds, particularly on this anniversary of the 
birth-day of our country. Nay, more ; it becomes us, on 
this occasion, as patriots and citizens, to turn our thoughts 
inward, as the good man dedicates his birth-day to the 
consideration of his character and the mode in which its 
vices may be corrected and its virtues strengthened. Avoid- 
ing, then, all exultation in the prosperity that has enriched 
our land, and in the extending influence of the blessings of 
freedom, let us consider what we can do to elevate our 
character, to add to the happiness of all, and to attain to 
that righteousness which exalteth a nation. In this spirit, I 
propose to inquire what, in our age, are the true objects of 
national ambition — what is truly national glory — national 
honor — WHAT IS the true grandeur of nations. 

* The chief of this is borrowed almost literally from the words attributed by Pla- 
to to the Fathers of Athens, in the beautiful funeral discourse of the Menexenus. 



I hope to rescue these terms, so powerful over the minds 
of men, from the mistaken objects to which they are apphed, 
from deeds of war and the extension of empire, that hence- 
forward they may be attached only to acts of Justice and 
Humanity. 

The subject will raise us to the contemplation of things 
that are not temporary or local in their character ; but which 
belong to all ages and all countries ; which are as lofty as 
Truth, as universal as Humanity. But it derives a peculiar 
interest, at this moment, from transactions in which our 
country has become involved. On the one side, by an act 
of unjust legislation, extending our power over Texas, we 
have endangered Peace with Mexico ; while on the other, by 
a presumptuous assertion of a disputed claim to a worthless 
territory beyond the Rocky Mountains, we have kindled 
anew on the hearth of our Mother Country, the smothered 
fires of hostile strife. Mexico and England both aver the 
determination to vindicate what is called the national honor ; 
and the dread arbitrament of war is calmly contemplated by 
our Government, provided it cannot obtain what is called an 
honorable peace.* 

Far be from our country and our age the sin and shame of 
contests hateful in the sight of God and all good men, having 
their origin in no righteous though mistaken sentiment, in no 
true love of country, in no generous thirst for fame, that last 
infirmity of noble minds, but springing in both cases from an 
ignorant and ignoble passion for new territories ; strengthened 
in one case, by an unnatural desire, in this land of boasted 
freedom, to fasten by new links the chains which promise 
soon to fall from the limbs of the unhappy slave ! In such 
contests, God has no attribute which can join with us. Who 
believes that the national honor will be promoted by a war 
with Mexico or England ? What just man would sacrifice a 
single human life, to bring under our rule both Texas and 
Oregon ? It was an ancient Roman, touched, perhaps, by a 
transient gleam of Christian truth, who said, when he turned 
aside from a career of Asiatic conquest, that he would rather 
save the life of a single citizen than become master of all the 
dominions of Mithridates. 

A war with Mexico would be mean and cowardly ; but 

* The official paper at Washington has said, " We presume the negotiation is 
really resumed, and will be prosecuted in this city, and not in London, to some 
definite conclusion— peaceably we should hope— but we wish for no peace but an 
honorable peace." 



with England it would be at least bold, though parricidal. 
The heart sickens at the murderous attack upon an enemy, 
<listracted by civil feuds, weak at home, impotent abroad ; 
but it recoils in horror from the deadly shock between chil- 
dren of a common ancestry, speaking the same language, 
soothed in infancy by the same words of love and tenderness, 
and hardened into vigorous manhood under the bracing 
influence of institutions drawn from the same ancient founts 
of freedom. Cur am acuebat, quod adversus Latinos bellan- 
dum erat, lingua morihus, armorum genere, insiitutis ante 
omnia militarihus, congruentes ; milites militibus, centurion- 
ibus centuriones, tribuni tribunis compares, coUegaque, iisdem 
pcersidis, sape iisdem manipulis permixti fuerant.* 

In our age there can can be no peace that is not hon- 
orable ; there can be no war that is not dishonora- 
ble.! The true honor of a nation is to be found only in 
deeds of justice and in the happiness of its people, all of 
which are inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Chris- 
tian judgment vain are its victories ; infamous are its spoils. 
He is the true benefactor and alone worthy of honor who 
brings comfort where before was wretchedness ; who dries 
the tear of sorrow ; who pours oil into the wounds of the 
unfortunate ; who feeds the hungry and clothes the naked ; 
who unlooses the fetters of the slave ; who does justice ; who 
enlightens the ignorant ; who enlivens and exalts, by his 
virtuous genius, in art, in literature, in science, the hours of 
life ; who, by words or actions, inspires a love for God and 
for man. This is the Christian hero, this is the man of 
honor in a Christian land. He is no benefactor, nor deserv- 
ing of honor, whatever may be his worldly renown, whose 
life is passed in acts of force ; who renounces the great law 
of Christian brotherhood ; whose vocation is blood ; who 
triumphs in battle over his fellow-men. Well may old Sir 
Thomas Browne exclaim, "the world does not know its 

* T. Liv. VIII, c. 6. 

t It will be observed that this proposition is restrained to our age. It is not 
intended to express any opinion with reiiard to the Past, and particularly, with 
regard to the VVar of the Revolution. Wars are the natural consequence of the 
predominance of the animal part of our nature ; but the day has now arrived in 
which we should declare Independence of the bestial propensities, and recognize 
the supremacy of the moral and intellectual faculties. The question of the 
justifiableness of the War of the Revolution has been handled with great strength 
and freedom by Hon. William Jay, in his admirable publication. Peace and War; 
in a sermon by Rev. Mr. Judd, and by the late Mr. Grimke, of South Carolina, 
in his address before the Connecticut Peace Society. For some considerations 
bearing on this question, 1 beg leave to refer to a letter printed in the Appendix, 
Note A. 



9 

greatest men ;" for thus far it has chiefly discerned the vio- 
lent brood of battle, the armed men springing up from the 
dragon's teeth sown by Hate, and cared little for the truly 
good men, children of Love, guiltless of their country's blood, 
whose steps on earth have been as noiseless as an angel's 
wing. 

It is not to be disguised that these views differ from the 
generally received opinions of the world down to this day. 
The voice of man has been given mostly to the praise of 
military chieftains, and the honors of victory have been 
chanted even by the lips of woman. The mother, while 
rocking her infant on her knees, has stamped on his tender 
mind, at that age more impressible than wax, the images of 
war ; she has nursed his slumbers with its melodies ; she has 
pleased his waking hours with its stories ; and selected for 
his playthings the plume and the sword. The child is father 
to the man ; and who can weigh the influence of these early 
impressions on the opinions of later years ? The mind which 
trains the child is like the hand which commands the end of 
a long lever ; a gentle effort at that time suffices to heave 
the enormous weight of succeeding years. As the boy 
advances to youth he is fed like Achilles, not only on honey 
and milk, but on bear's flesh and lion's marrow. He draws 
the nutriment of his soul from a literature, whose beautiful 
fields have been moistened by human blood. Fain would I 
offer my tribute to the Father of Poetry, standing, with harp 
of immortal melody, on the misty mountain top of distant 
antiquity ; to all those stories of courage and sacrifice which 
emblazon the annals of Greece and Rome ; to the fulmina- 
tions of Demosthenes and the splendors of Tully ; to the 
sweet verse of Virgil and the poetic prose of Livy. Fain 
would I offer my tribute to the new literature, which shot up 
in modern times as a vigorous forest from the burnt site of 
ancient woods ; to the passionate song of the Troubadour of 
France, and the Minnesinger of Germany ; to the thrilling 
ballads of Spain, and the delicate music of the Italian lyre. 
But from all these has breathed the breath of war, that has 
swept the heart-strings of innumerable generations of men ! 

And when the youth becomes a man, his country invites 
his services in war, and holds before his bewildered imagina- 
tion the highest prizes of honor. For him is the pen of the 
historian and the verse of the poet. His soul swells at the 
thought, that he also is a soldier ; that his name shall be 
2 



10 

entered on the list of those who have borne arms in the 
cause of their country ; and perhaps, he dreams, that he too 
may sleep, like the Great Captain of Spain, with a hundred 
trophies over his grave. But the contagion spreads among 
us, beyond those bands on whom is imposed the positive 
obligation of law. Respectable citizens volunteer to look 
like soldiers, and to affect in dress, in arms and deportment, 
what is called "the pride, pomp and circumstance of glo- 
rious war." The ear-piercing fife has to-day filled our 
streets, and we have come together, on this Anniversary, by 
the thump of drum and the sound of martial music. 

It is not strange, then, that the spirit of war still finds a 
home among us ; nor that its honors are still regarded. This 
fact may seem to give point to the bitter philosophy of 
Hobbes, who held that the natural state of mankind was 
war, and to sustain the exulting language of the soldier in 
our own day, who has said : " War is the condition of this 
world. From man to the smallest insect, all are at strife ; 
and the glory of arms, which cannot be obtained without the 
exercise of honor, fortitude, courage, obedience, modesty and 
temperance, excites the brave n)an's patriotism, and is a 
chastening correction of the rich man's pride."* 

I now ask what is war] Let me give a short but strictly 
scientific answer. War is a public, armed, contest, between 
nations, in order to establish justice between them ; as, for 
instance, to determine a disputed boundary line, or the title 
to a territory. It has been called by Lord Bacon one 
of the highest trials of right, when princes and states, that 
acknowledge no superior upon earth, shall put themselves upon 
the justice of God for the deciding of their controversies by 
such success as it shall please him to give on either side."f 

* Napier, Penis. War, VI. 688. " Why, man," said a British General, "do you 
know that a grenadier is the greatest character in this world," and after a mo- 
ment's pause, adding the emphasis of an oath to his speech, " and, 1 believe, 
in the next too." Southey's Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of So- 
ciety, 1.211. 

t Bacon's Works, Vol. 111. p. 40. This definition of Lord Bacon has been 
adopted by Mr. Chancellor Kent in his authoritative work. — Kent, Commenta- 
ries on American Law, Vol. L p. 46. Vattel defines war as " that state in which 
we prosecute our rights by force." — Law of f^ations. Book 3, ch. L § 1 ; in 
which he very nearly follows Bynkershoek, who says ; Bellum est eorum, qui 
suae potestatis suntj^wris sui persequendi ergo, concertatio per vim vel dolum. — 
Quaest. Jur. Pub. Lib. L c. 6. Mr. Whewell, in his recent work, says : Though 
war is appealed to because there is no other ultimate tribunal to which States 
can have recourse, it is appealed to for justice.— Elements of Morality and 
Polity, Vol. 11. ^ 1146. Mr. Lieber says, in a work abounding in learning and 
sagacious thought, Political Ethics, TI. 643, that war is a mode of obtaining 
rights ; a definition which does not differ in substance from that in the text ; 
though he imagines that such wars may justly be regarded aa defensive in their 



11 

This definition may seem, at first view, to exclude what 
are termed by " martial logic," defensive wars. But a close 
consideration of the subject will make it apparent that no 
war can arise among Christian nations at the present day, 
except to determine an asserted right. The wars usually 
and falsely called defensive are of this character. They are 
appeals for justice to force ; endeavors to redress evils by 
force. They spring from the sentiment of vengeance or 
honor. They inflict evil for evil, and vainly essay to over- 
come evil by evil. The wars that now lower from Mexico 
and England are of this character. On the one side, we 
assert a title to Texas, which is disputed ; and on the other 
a title to Oregon, which is disputed. Who can regard the 
ordeal by battle in these causes as a defensive war? The 
object proposed in 1834 by war with France, was to secure 
the payment of five millions of dollars, in other words, to 
determine by the arbitrament of war, a question of justice. 
It would be madness to term this a case of self-defence ; it 
has been happily said,* if, because a man refuses to pay a 
just debt, I go to his house and beat him, that is not self- 
defence ; but such was precisely the conduct proposed to be 
adopted by our country. The avowed purpose of the war, 
declared by the United States against Great Britain in 1812, 
was to obtain from the latter power an abandonment of her 
unrighteous claim to search American vessels. It is a mock- 
ery to miscall such a contest a defensive war. 

I repeat, therefore, that war is a public armed contest, be- 
tween nations, in order to establish justice between them. 

When we have considered the character of war ; the mis- 
eries it produces ; and its utter and shameful insufficiency, as 
a means of establishing justice, we may then be able to de- 
termine, strictly and logically, whether it must not be ranked 
with crimes from which no true honor can spring, to individ- 
uals or nations, but rather condemnation and shame. 

I. And first, as to the character of war, or that part of our 
nature in which it has its origin. Listen to the voice of the 
ancient poet of Boeotian Ascra : 

character. He advocates war with the ardor of one inspired by the history of 
the past, and looking no higher than to history for rales of conduct, while his 
own experience of suffering on fields of slaughter has failed to make him 
discern the folly and wickedness of such a mode of determining questions be- 
tween nations. 

* Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, in his Address on the Nature and Influence of 
War, where he treats this topic, as well as the whole subject of war, with great 
point and effect. 



m 

This is the law for mortals ordained by the Ruler of Heaven 5 
Fishes and Beasts and Birds of the air devour each other; 
Justice dwells not among them; only to man has he given 
Justice the Highest and Best* 

The first idea that rises to the mind, in regarding war, is 
that it is a resort to force, whereby each nation strives to 
overpower the other. Reason, and the divine part of our 
nature, in which alone we differ from the beasts, in which 
alone we approach the Divinity, in which alone are the ele- 
ments oi justice, the professed object of war, are dethroned. 
It is, in short, a temporary adoption, by men, of the character 
of wild beasts, emulating their ferocity, rejoicing like them in 
blood, and seeking, as with a lion's paw, to hold an asserted 
right. This character of war is somewhat disguised, in more 
recent days, by the skill and knowledge which it employs ; 
it is, however, still the same, made more destructive by the 
genius and intellect which have been degraded to its servants. 
The early poets, in the unconscious simplicity of the world's 
childhood, make this strikingly apparent. All the heroes of 
Homer are likened in their rage to the ungovernable fury of 
animals or things devoid of human reason or human affec- 
tion. Menelaus presses his way through the crowd, " like a 
beast. "f Sarpedon was aroused against the Argives, " as 
a lion against the crooked-horned oxen ;" J and afterwards 
rushes forward, " like a lion nourished on the mountains for 
a long time famished for want of flesh, but whose courage 
compels him to go even to the well-guarded sheep-fold. "<§> 
The great Telamonian Ajax in one and the same passage is 
likened to " a beast," " a tawny lion," and " an obstinate 
ass ;" II and all the Greek chiefs, the flower of the camp, 
are described as ranged about Diomed, " like raw-eating lions 
or wild boars whose strength is irresistible. "IT And Hector, 
the hero in whom cluster the highest virtues of polished war, 
is called by the characteristic term, " the tamer of horses," 
and one of his renowned feats in battle, indicating only brute 
strength, is where he takes up and hurls a stone which two 
of the strongest men could not easily put into a wagon ;** 
and he drives over dead bodies and shields, while the axle is 
defiled by gore, and the guard about the seat, sprinkled from 

* Hesiod, Works and Days^v. 276 — 279. Cicero also says; Neque ulla re 
longius absumus a natura ferarum, in quibus inesse fortitudinem saepe dicimus, ut 
in equis, in leonibus; justitiam, aequitatem, bonitatem non dicimus.— De Offic. 
Lib. 1 cap. 16. 

+ Qriol ioiy.(hi. U. 111. 449. t Akoi'd' &g ^ovalv iXi^iv. H- XII. 293. 

§ Il.^XII, 300—306. II II. XI. 547—658. H II. V. 782. 

** 11. XII, 445—449. See a similar act, iEneid, XII. 826. 



13 

the horse's hoofs and from the tires of the wheels ;* and, 
in that most admired passage of ancient Uterature, before 
returning hi? child, the young Astyanax, to the arms of 
his wife, he invokes the gods for a single blessing on his 
head, that he may excel his father, and bring home bloody 
spoils, his enemy being slain, and 50 make glad the heart of 
his mother." f 

Illustrations of this nature might be gathered from the 
early fields of modern literature, as well as from the more 
ancient, all showing the unconscious degradation of the sol- 
dier, who, in the pursuit of justice, renounces the human 
character to assume that of the beasts. Henry V, in our own 
Shakspeare, in the spirit-stirring appeal to his troops, says : 

When the blast of war blows in our ears, 
TTien imitate the action of the tiger. X 

This is plain and frank, and reveals the true character of war. 
I need not dwell on the moral debasement of man that 
must ensue. All the passions of his nature are unleashed 
like so many blood-hounds, and suffered to rage. All the 
crimes which fill our prisons stalk abroad, plaited with the 
soldier's garb, and unwhipt of justice. Murder, robbery, 
rape, arson, theft, are the sports of this fiendish Saturnalia, 
when 

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, 
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart, 
In the liberty of bloody hand shall range 
iVith conscience wide as hell. 

Such is the foul disfigurement which war produces in man ; 
man, of whom it has been said, " how noble in reason, how 
infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and 
admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, 
how like a God !" 

II. Let us now consider more particularly the effects or 
consequences of this resort to brute force, in the pursuit of 
justice. 

The immediate effect of war is to sever all relations of 
friendship and commerce between the two nations and every 

* II. XI. 534. See a similar scene. iEneid, XII.337. In modern warfare, we 
find a similar sketch of the great Conde. The soul is startled by the picture of 
a distinguished person, in whom the human character has been blotted out : " Le 
Due etait convert de sueur, de poussi^re, et de fumee; le feu jaillissait de ses 
yeux, et le bras dont it tenait son '^pee etait ensanglanti jusqu 'au conde. ' Vous 
etes blesse, Monsigneur V Lui demanda Bussaq. ' Non, non, repondit Enghiea 
LConde]; d est le sang de ses coquins !' 11 voulait parler des ennemie." Mahon, 
Essai sur la vie dii Grande Conde, p. 60. 

t H. VI. 473—481. t Hen. V. Act 3, Scene I. 



14 

individual thereof, impressing upon each citizen or subject the 
character of enemy. Imagine this between England and 
the United States. The iimumerable ships of the two coun- 
tries, the white doves of commerce, bearing the olive of 
peace, would be driven from the sea, or turned from their 
proper purposes to be ministers of destruction ; the threads 
of social and business intercourse which have become woven 
into a thick web would be suddenly snapped asunder ; friend 
could no longer communicate with friend ; the twenty thou- 
sand letters, which each fortnight are speeded, from this port 
alone, across the sea, could no longer be sent, and the human 
affections and desires, of which these are the precious ex- 
pression, would seek in vain for utterance. Tell me, you, 
who have friends and kindred abroad, or who are bound to 
foreigners by the more worldly relations of commerce, are 
you prepared for this rude separation ? 

But this is little compared with what must follow. This 
is only the first portentous shadow of the disastrous eclipse, 
the twilight usher of thick darkness, that is to cover the 
whole heavens, as with a pall, to be broken only by the 
blazing lightnings of the battle and the siege. 

The horrors of these redden every page of history ; while 
to the disgrace of humanity, the historian has rarely applied , 
to their brutal authors the condemnation they deserve. A 
popular writer, in our own day, dazzled by those false ideas 
of greatness at which reason and Christianity blush, does not 
hesitate to dwell on them with terms of rapture and eulogy.* 

*The same spirit pervades the Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, by Thiers, 
and so far as I liave read it, his later work, the History of the Consulate and Em- 
pire. For a degrading picture of what is called glory, I would refer to the 
Histoire de la Revolution, Tom. 8, p. 430. War in every age has been the same ; 
and to the shame of human nature has never wanted historians, who described its 
deeds with feelings kindred to those by which they were inspired. Froissart, 
who takes special delight in describing " les rencontres ou I'on pouvoit 
voir d'une et de'autre part, belles envahies, belles rescousses, beaux faits d'armes, 
et belles prouesses," has recounted with much detail all the assaults of cities 
and castles, the almost constant result of which was, " que la ville etoit assez 
t6t gagnee par force et tant6t robte et niise a I'epee, sans mercy, hommes et 
femmes, et enfans, et less eglises arses et bruslees." Lewis of Spain trans- 
ported his troops to Basse-Bretannque, " pour aller ardoir et rober tout le pays, 
et trouv^rent si grand avoir que merveille seroit a raconter." Gaultier de Maury 
pursued them ; but he occupied himself " a maisons et villes ardoir, et a, gagner 
du butin." Froissart, c. 178, p. 88. Sismondi has correctly remarked that 
Froissart accorded his admiration equally to bravery and to cunning, to the 
courtesy which pardoned as to the rage which caused the flow of torrents of 
blood. Sismondi, Histoire des Fran^ais, Tom. X. 373. Even the beautiful soul 
of VVilberforce, which sighed "that the bloody laws of his country sent many 
unprepared into another world," by capital punishment, could hail the slaughter of 
Waterloo, on the Sabbath that he held so holy, by which thousands were hurried 
into Eternity, as " a splendid victory !" Life of Wilberforce, IV. 256, 26L 



15 

At Tarragona, above six thousand human beings, almost all 
defenceless, men and women, gray hairs and infant inno- 
cence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were butchered by 
the infuriated troops in one night, and the morning sun rose 
upon a city whose streets and houses were inundated with 
blood. And yet this is called " a glorious exploit."* This 
was a conquest by the French. At a later day, Ciudad Rod- 
rigo was stormed by the British, when there ensued in the 
license of victory, a frightful scene of plunder and violence, 
while shouts and screams on all sides fearfully intermingled 
with the groans of the wounded. The churches were dese- 
crated, the cellars of wine and spirits were pillaged ; fire was 
wantonly applied to different parts of the city ; and brutal in- 
toxication spread in every direction. It was only when the 
drunken men dropped from excess, or fell asleep, that any 
degree of order was restored, and yet the storming of Ciudad 
Rodrigo is pronounced " one of the most brilliant exploits of 
the British army."f This exploit was followed by the storm- 
ing of Badajoz, in which the same scenes were enacted again 
with added atrocities. Let the story be told in the words of 
a partial historian : " Shameless rapacity, brutal intemper- 
ance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous 
lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fire 
bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, 
and the report of muskets used in violence, resounded for two 
days and nights in the streets of Badajoz ! On the third 
when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted 
by their excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled ! 
The wounded were then looked to, the dead disposed of."J 
The same terrible war affords another instance of the hor- 
rors of a siege, which cries to Heaven for judgment. For 
weeks before the surrender of Saragossa, the deaths were 
from four to five hundred daily ; the living were unable to 
bury the dead, and thousands of carcasses, scattered about 
the streets and court-yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of 
churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption or to 
be licked up by the flames of the burning houses. The city 
was shaken to its foundation by sixteen thousand shells 
thrown during the bombardment, and the explosion of forty- 
five thousand pounds of powder in the mines, while the bones 



* Alison, Hist, of French Rev, VIII. 114. f Alison, Hist. VIII. 189. 

t JNapier, History of Penins. War, IV. 431, 



16 

of forty thousand persons of every age and both sexes bore 
dreadful testimony to the unutterable atrocity of war.* 

These might be supposed to be pictures from the age of 
Alaric, Scourge of God, or of Attila, whose boast was, that 
the grass did not grow where his horse had set his foot ; but 
no ; they belong to our own times. They are portions of 
the wonderful but wicked career of him, who stands out as 
the foremost representative of worldly grandeur. The 
heart aches, as we follow him and his marshals from field to 
field of glory .f At Albuera in Spain, we see the horrid 
piles of carcasses, while all the night the rain pours down, 
and the river and the hills and the woods on each side, re- 
sound with the dismal clamors and groans of dying men. J 
At Salamanca, long after tiie battle, we behold the ground 
still blanched by the skeletons of those who fell, and strewn 
with the fragments of casques and cuirasses. We follow in 
the dismal traces of his Russian campaign ; at Valentina*§> 
we see the soldiers black with powder, their bayonets bent 
with the violence of the encounter ; the earth ploughed with 
cannon shot, the trees torn and mutilated, the field covered 
with broken carriages, wounded horses and mangled bodies, 
while disease, sad attendant on military suffering, sweeps 
thousands from the great hospitals of the army, and the mul- 
titude of amputated limbs, which there is not time to destroy, 
accumulate in bloody heaps, filling the air with corruption. || 
What tongue, what pen, can describe the horrors of the 
field of Borodino, where between the rise and set of a single 
sun, more than one hundred thousand of our fellow-men, 
equalling in number the population of this whole city, sank 
to the earth dead or wounded? Fifty days after the battle, 
no less than twenty thousand are found lying where they 

* Napier, Hist, of Pen. War, 11.46. For the terrific storming of St. Sebastian, 
see Napier, VL 197—219. 

_t A living poet of Italy, who will be placed by his prose, among the great names 
of his country's literature, in a deathless ode, which he has thrown on the Urn of 
JVapoleon, leaves to posterity to judge whether his was true glory. 
Dall' Alpi alle Piramidi, 
Dal Manzanare al Reno 
Di quel securo il fulmine, 
Tenea dietro il baleno, 
Scoppio da Scilla al Tanai 
Dall' uno all' altro mar. 

Fu vera gloria ? Ai posteri 

L' ardua sentenza. Manzoni, 11 Cinque Maggio. 

When men learn to appreciate moral grandeur, the easy sentence will be ren- 
dered, and the glory of the warrior be scattered like the unclean dust of his 
earthly body. 

t Napier, III. 543. § Alison, VIJ. 241. || Alison, VII. 355. 



17 

have fallen, and the whole plain is strewn with half-buried 
carcasses of men and horses, intermingled with garments 
dyed in blood, and bones gnawed by dogs and vultures. 
Who can follow the French army, in their dismal retreat, 
avoiding the pursuing spear of the Cossack, only to sink 
under the sharper frost and ice, in a temperature below zero, 
on foot, without a shelter for their bodies, and famishing on 
horse-flesh and a miserable compound of rye and snow-water ? 
Still later we behold him with a fresh array, contending 
against new forces under the walls of Dresden ; and as the 
Emperor rides over the field of battle, having supped with 
the king of Saxony the night before, ghastly traces of the 
contest of the preceding day are to be seen on all sides ; out 
of the newly made graves hands and arms are projecting, 
stark and stiff" above the earth.* And shortly afterwards 
when shelter is needed for the troops, direction is given to 
occupy the Hospitals for the Insane, with the order " turn out 
the mad."t 

But why follow further in this career of blood ? There is, 
however, one other picture of the atrocious, though natural 
consequences of war, occurring almost within our own day. 
that I would not omit. Let me bring to your mind Genoa, 
called the Suburb, City of palaces, dear to the memory of 
American childhood as the birth-place of Christopher Colum- 
bus, and one of the spots first enlightened by the morning 
beams of civilization, whose merchants were princes, and 
whose rich argosies, in those early days, introduced to Europe 
the choicest products of the East, the linen of Egypt, the 
spices of Arabia, and the silks of Samarcand. She still sits 
in Queenly pride, as she did then, her mural crown studded 
with towers, her churches rich with marble floors and rarest 
pictures, her palaces of ancient Doges and Admirals yet 
spared by the hand of Time, her close streets, thronged by 
one hundred thousand inhabitants, at tlie feet of the maritime 
Alps, as they descend to the blue and tideless waters of the 
Mediterranean sea, leaning with her back against their strong 
mountain sides, overshadowed by the foliage of the fig tree 
and the olive, while the orange and lemon fill with their 
perfume the air where reigns perpetual spring. Who can 
contemplate such a city without delight ? Who can listen to 
the story of her sorrows without a pang ? 

In the autumn of 1799, the armies of the French Republic, 

*Alison, IX. 226. fAlison, IX, 267. 

3 



18 

which had domuiated over Italy, were driven from their con- 
quests, and compelled with shrunk forces, under Massena, to 
seek shelter within the walls of Genoa. After various ef- 
forts by the Austrian General on the land, aided by a bom- 
bardment from the British fleet in the harbor, to force the 
strong defences by assault, the city is invested by a strict 
blockade. All communication with the country is cut off on 
the one side, while the harbor is closed by the ever-wakeful 
British watch-dogs of war. Within the beleagured and un- 
fortunate city, are the peaceful inhabitants, more than those 
of Boston in number, besides the French troops. Provisions 
soon become scarce ; scarcity sharpens into want, till fell 
Famine, bringing blindness and madness in her train, rages 
like an Erinnys. Picture to yourself this large population, 
not pouring out their lives in the exulting rush of battle, but 
wasting at noon-day, the daughter by the side of the mother, 
the husband by the side of the wife. When grain and rice 
fail, flax-seed, millet, cocoas and almonds are ground by 
hand-mills into flour, and even bran, baked with honey, is 
eaten not to satisfy, but to deaden hunger. During the 
siege, but before the last extremities, a pound of horse-flesh 
is sold for 32 cents ; a pound of bran for 30 cents ; a pound 
of flour for $ 1,75. A single bean is soon sold for four cents, 
and a biscuit of three ounces for .$2,25, and none are finally 
to be had. The miserable soldiers, after devouring all the 
horses in the city, are reduced to the degradation of feeding 
on dogs, cats, rats and worms, which are eagerly hunted out 
in the cellars and common sewers. Happy were now, ex- 
claims an Italian historian, not those who hved, but those 
who died ! The day is dreary from hunger ; the night more 
dreary still from hunger accompanied by delirious fancies. 
Recourse is now had to herbs ; monk's rhubarb, sorrel, 
mallows, wild succory. People of every condition, women 
of noble birth and beauty, seek on the slope of the mountain 
enclosed within the defences, those aliments which nature 
destined solely for the beasts. A little cheese and a few 
vegetables are all that can be afforded to the sick and 
wounded, those sacred stipendal-ies upon human charity. 
Men and women, in the last anguish of despair, now fill the 
air with their groans and shrieks ; some in spasms, convulsions 
and contortions, gasping their last breath on the unpitying 
stones of the streets ; alas ! not more unpitying than mant 
Children, whom a dying mother's arms had ceased to pro- 



19 

tect, the orphans of an hour, with piercing cries, seek in 
vain the compassion of the passing stranger ; but none pity 
or aid them. The sweet fountains of sympathy are all 
closed by the selfishness of individual distress. In the gene- 
ral agony, the more impetuous rush out of the gates, and 
impale themselves on the Austrian bayonets, while others 
precipitate themselves into the sea. Others still (pardon the 
dire recital !) are driven to eat their shoes and devour the 
leather of their pouches, and the horror of human flesh has 
so far abated that numbers feed like cannibals, on the bodies 
of the dead.* 

At this stage the French general capitulated, claiming and 
receiving what are called " the honors of war ; " but not be- 
fore twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women 
and children, having no part or interest in the war, had died 
the most horrible of deaths. The Austrian flag floated over 
the captured Genoa but a brief span of time ; for Bonaparte 
had already descended, like an eagle, from the Alps, and in 
less than a fortnight afterwards, on the vast plains of Maren- 
go, shattered, as with an iron mace, the Austrian empire in 
Italy. 

But wasted lands, ruined and famished cities, and slaugh- 
tered armies are only a part of " the purple testament of 
bleeding war." Every soldier is connected, as all of you, 
by dear ties of kindred, love and friendship. He has been 
sternly summoned from the warm embraces of family. To 
him there is, perhaps, an aged mother, who has fondly hoped 
to lean her decaying frame upon his more youthful form ; 

* This picture has been drawn from the animated sketches of Botta (History 
of Italy, under Napoleon, vol. J. chap. I.) Alison, (Hist, of French. Rev. vol. IV. 
chap. XXX.) and Arnold, (Modern History, Lee IV.) The humanity of the 
latter is particularly aroused to the condemnation of this most atrocious murder 
of iimocent people, and he suggests, as a sufficient remedy, a modification of the 
laws of war, permitting all non-combatants to withdraw from a blockaded town ! 
They may be spared in this way the languishing death by starvation ; but they 
must desert their firesides, their pursuits, all that makes life dear, and become 
homeless exiles ; a fate little better than the former. It is strange that Ar- 
nold's pure soul and clear judgment did not recogrnize the great truth, that all 
war is unrighteous and unlawful, and that the horrors of this siege are its natural 
consequence. Laws of war! Laws in that which is lawless ! order in disorder ! 
rules of wrong! There can be only one law of war ; that is the great law, 
which pronounces it unwise, unchristian and unjust. The term. Laws, or Rights 
of War, has been referred to the ancient Greeks; but, it is believed, that they 
are not chargeable with the invention of such a contradictory combination of 
words. Grotius was misled, and it would seem after him. Sir James Mackintosh, 
(Lecture on the Law of Nature and Nations), into the belief that Aristotle wrote 
a treatise ^ixui(bfiaia nolsftoii', by a corrupted passage of Ammonius, the 
Grammarian, in his Treatise, of like and different words, where there is nolefiov 
Wars, instead of nbleuiv States. See Barbeyrac's note to $ 38 of the Prelim- 
inary Discourses of Grotius on the Rights of Peace and War ; Selden, Of the 
Law of Nature and Nations, juxta Discipl. Hebr. Lib. chap. 1, p. 4. 



20 

perhaps a wife, whose hfe has been just entwined insepara- 
bly with his, now condemned to wasting despair ; perhaps 
brothers, sisters. As he falls on the field of battle, must not 
all these rush with his blood ? But who can measure the 
distress that radiates as from a bloody sun, penetrating innu- 
merable homes ? Who can give the guage and dimensions 
of this incalculable sorrow ? Tell me, ye who have felt the 
bitterness of parting with dear friends and kindred, whom 
you have watched tenderly till the last golden sands have run 
out, and the great hour-glass is turned, what is the measure 
of your anguish ? Your friend has departed, soothed by 
kindness and in the arms of love ; the soldier gasps out his 
life with no friend near, while the scowl of hate darkens all 
that he beholds, darkens his own departing soul. Who can 
forget the anguish that fills the bosom and crazes the brain 
of Leonora, in the matchless ballad of Burger, who seeks in 
vain among the returning squadrons for her lover left dead on 
Prague's ensanguined plain ? But every field of blood has 
many Leonoras. From a poet of antiquity, we draw a vivid 
picture of homes made desolate by the murders of battle.* 

But through the bounds of Grecia's land, 

Who sent her sons for Troy to part, 

See mourning, with much suffering heart, 

On each man's thresliold stand, 

On each sad hearth in Grecia's land. 

Well may her soul with grief be rent j 

She well remembers whom she sent, 

She sees them not return; 

Instead of men, to each man's home, 

Urns and ashes only come, 

And the armor which they wore ; 

Sad relics to their native shore. 

For Mars, the barterer of the lifeless clay. 

Who sells for gold the slain. 

And holds the scale »» battle's doubtful day, 

High balanced o'er the plain, 

From Ilium's walls for men returns 

Ashes and sepulchral urns; 

Ashes wet with many a tear, 

Sad relics of the fiery bier. 

Round the full urns the general groan 

Goes, as each their kindred own. 

One they mourn in battle strong, 

And one, that 'raid the armed throng 

He sunk in glory's slaughtering tide, 

And for another's consort died. 

Others they mourn whose monuments stand 
By Ilium's walls on foreign strand j 
Where they fell in beauty's bloom, 
There they lie in hated tomb ; 
Sunk beneath the massy mound, 
In eternal chambers bound. 



* Agamemnon of .^schylus ; Chorus. This is from the beautiful translation of 
John Symmons. 



21 

III. From this dreary picture of the miseries of war, I 
turn to another branch of the subject. 

War is utterly ineffectual to secure or advance the object 
at which it aims. The misery which it excites, contributes 
to no end, helps to establish no right, and therefore, in no 
respect determines justice between the contending nations. 

The fruitlessness and vanity of war appear in the results 
of the great wars by which the world has been lacerated. 
After long struggles, in which each nation has inflicted and 
received incalculable injury, peace has been gladly obtained 
on the basis of the condition of things before the war. — 
Status ante Bellum. Let me refer for an example to our 
last war with Great Britain, the professed object of which 
was to obtain from the latter Power a renunciation of her 
claim to impress our seamen. The greatest number of 
American seamen ever officially alleged to be compulsorily 
serving in the British navy was about eight hundred. To 
overturn this injustice, the whole country was doomed, for 
more than three years to the accursed blight of war. Our 
commerce was driven from the seas ; the resources of the 
land were drained by taxation ; villages on the Canadian 
frontier were laid in ashes ; the metropolis of the Republic 
was captured, while guant distress raged every where within 
our borders. Weary with this rude trial, our Government 
appointed Commissioners to treat for Peace, under these 
instructions : " Your first duty will be to conclude peace 
with Great Britain, and you are authorized to do it, in case 
you obtain a satisfactory stipulation against impressment, 
one which shall secure under our flag protection to the crew. 
If this encroachment of Great Britain is not provided against, 
the United States have appealed to arms in vainJ' * After- 
wards, despairing of extorting from Great Britain a relin- 
quishment of the unrighteous claim, and foreseeing only an 
accumulation of calamities from an inveterate prosecution of 
the war, our Government directed their negotiators, in con- 
cluding a Treaty of Peace, " to omit any stipulation on the 
subject of impressment.^' The instructions were obeyed and 
the Treaty that once more restored to us the blessings of 
Peace, which we had rashly cast away, and which the coun- 
try hailed with an intoxication of joy, contained no allusion 
to the subject of impressment, nor did it provide for the 
surrender of a single American sailor detained in the service 

* American State Papers, vol. VII. p. 577. 



22 

of the British navy, and thus, by the confession of our own 
Government, " the United States had appealed to arms in 

VAIN." * 

All this is the natural result of an appeal to war in order 
to establish justice. Justice implies the exercise of the 
judgment in the determination of right. Now war not only 
supersedes the judgment, but delivers over the results to 
superiority of force or to chance. 

Who can measure before-hand the currents of the heady 
fight? In common language we speak of the chances of 
battle ; and soldiers whose lives are devoted to this harsh 
calling, yet speak of it as a game. The Great Captain of 
our age, who seemed to chain victory to his chariot wheels, 
in a formal address to his officers, on entering Russia, says : 
" In war, fortune has an equal share with ability in procuring 
success." t The mighty victory of Marengo, the accident 
of an accident, wrested unexpectedly at the close of the day 
from a foe, who at an earlier hour was successful, must have 
taught him the uncertainty of war. Afterwards, in the 
bitterness of his spirit, when his immense forces had been 
shivered, and his triumphant eagles driven back with broken 
wing, he exclaimed, in that remarkable conversation recorded 
by the Abbe de Pradt : " Well ! this is war. High in the 
morning, — low enough at night. From a triumph to a fall is 
often but a step." J The military historian of the Peninsular 
campaigns, says: "Fortune always asserts her supremacy 
in war, and often from a slight mistake, such disastrous 
consequences flow, that in every age and in every nation, 
the uncertainty of wars has been proverbial ; "*§> and again, 
in another place, in considering the conduct of Wellington, 
he says : " A few hours' delay, an accident, a turn of fortune, 
and he would have been foiled ! ay ! but this is war, always 
dangerous and uncertain, an ever-rolling wheel and armed 
with scythes." || And can intelligent man look for justice to 
an ever-rolling wheel armed with scythes ? 

The character of war, as dependent upon chance, might be 
illustrated from every page of history. It is less discerned, 
perhaps, in the conflict of large masses, than of individuals, 
though equally present in both. How capriciously the 

* This sketch has been drawn from the War and Peace, by Hon. William Jay, 
a gentleman whose various writings in the cause of humanity, marked by rare 
power of logic, accuracy of statement and elevated sentiment, will shed upon his 
name a fame not inferior to that of his illustrious father. 

tAlison, VIII. 346. tlb.,IX.239. $ Napier, VI. 687. || lb,, IV. 477. 



23 

wheel turned when the fortunes of Rome were staked on the 
combat between the Horatii and Curiatii, and who, at one 
time, could have augured that the single Horatius, with his 
two slain brothers on the field, would have overpowered the 
three living enemies ? 

But the most interesting illustration is to be found in the 
history of the private wars, and particularly of the judicial 
combat, or of tkial by battle, in the dark ages. The ob- 
ject proposed in these cases was precisely the professed object 
of modern war, the determination of justice. Did time per- 
mit, it would be interesting and instructive to trace the curious 
analogies between this early ordeal by battle, child of super- 
stition and brute force, and the great ordeal of war.* Like 
the other ordeals, by burning ploughshares, by holding hot 
iron, by dipping the hand in hot water, or hot oil, they are 
both a presumptuous appeal to Providence, under an appre- 
hension and hope, that Heaven will give the victory to him 
who has the right. The monstrous usage of trial by battle 
prevailed in the early modern centuries throughout Europe ; 
it was a part of the common law of England ; and though it 
fell into desuetude, overruled by the advancing spirit of civi- 
lization, still, to the disgrace of the English law, it was not 
legislatively abolished, until in 1817 the right to it had been 
distinctly claimed in Westminster Hall. Abraham Thornton, 
on appeal against him for murder, when brought into court, 
pleaded as follows : " Not guilty, and I am ready to defend 
the same by my body ; " and thereupon taking off his glove, 
he threw it upon the floor of the court. The appellant did 
not choose to submit to this trial, and abandoned his proceed- 
ings. In the next session of Parliament, trial by battle was 
abolished in England.f The Attorney General, on introduc- 
ing the bill for this purpose remarked, that, " if the party had 
persevered he had no doubt the legislature would have felt it 
their imperious duty to interfere and pass an ex post facto law, 
to prevent so degrading a spectacle from taMng place." % 

To an early monarch of France belongs the honor of first 
interposing the royal authority, for the entire suppression 
within his jurisdiction of this impious usage, so universally 
adopted, so dear to the nobility and so profoundly rooted in 
the institutions of the Feudal Age. And here let me pause 
with reverence, as I mention the name of St. Louis, a prince, 

" See Appendix, Note B. t Blackstone, Com. III. 337, Chitty's note. 

t Annual Register, Vol. 61, p, 52 (1819). 



24 

whose unenlightened errors may find easy condemnation in 
our age of larger toleration and wider knowledge, but whose 
firm and upright soul, whose exalted sense of justice, whose 
fatherly regard for the happiness of his people, whose respect 
for the rights of others, whose conscience void of offence 
before God and man, make him foremost among Christian 
rulers, the highest example for a Christian prince or a Chris- 
tian people. He was of conscience all-compact, subjecting 
all that he did to the single and exclusive test of moral recti- 
tude, disregarding all considerations of worldly advantage, 
all fear of worldly consequences. 

His soul, thus tremblingly sensitive to questions of right, 
was shocked by the judicial combat. In his sight, it was a 
sin thus to tempt God, by demanding of him a miracle, when- 
ever judgment was to be pronounced. In 1260 he assembled 
a parliament, where he issued an ordinance, to take effect 
throughout the royal dominion, in which he expressly says: 
" We forbid to all persons throughout our dominions the 
trial by battle ; and, instead of battles, we establish proofs 
by witnesses ; and we do not take away the other good and 
loyal proofs which have been used in lay courts to this day. 
* * * And these battles we abolish in our 
dominions for ever." * 

Such were the restraints on the royal authority, that this 
Ordinance was confined in its operation to the demesnes of 
the King ; and did not extend to those of the barons and 
feudatories of the realm. But where the power of St. Louis 
did not reach, there he labored by his example, his influence 
and his express intercession. He treated with many of the 
great vassals of the crown, and induced them to renounce 
this unnatural usage. Though for many years later, France 
continued in some parts to be vexed by it, still its overthrow 
commenced with the Ordinance of St. Louis. 

Honor and blessings attend the name of this truly Christian 
King; who submitted all his actions to the Heaven-descend- 
ed sentiment of duty ; who began a long and illustrious 
reign by renouncing and restoring a portion of the conquests 

* " Nous deffendons a tous leu batailles par tout nostre demengne (domaine) ; 
mes nous n'ostons mie les claims, les respons, les convenants, ne tous autres 
convenants que I'en fait en court laie, siques a ore selon les usages de clivers pays, 
fors que nous ostons les batailles ; et en lieu des batailles nous metons prueves de 
tesmoins ; et si n'oston pas les autres bones prueves et loyaux qui out este en 
court laie siques a ore. * * * Et ces batailles nows ostons en mestre demaigne 
a toujours." Recueil des Ordonnances, t. I. p. 86 — 93. Guizot, Histolre de la 
Civilization en France, IV. 162 — 164. 



25 

of his predecessor, saying to those about him, whose souls 
did not ascend to the height of his morahty, " I know that 
the predecessors of the King of England have lost by the 
right of conquest the land which I hold ; and the land which 
I give him, I do not give because I am bound to him or his 
heirs, hut to put love betiveen my children and his children, 
who are cousin-germans ; and it seems to me that what I 
thus give, I employ to good purpose ! " * Honor to him 
who never grasped by force or cunning any new acquisition ; 
who never sought advantage from the turmoils and dissen- 
sions of his neighbors, but studied to allay them ; who, first 
of Christian Princes, rebuked the spirit of war, saying to 
those who would have him profit by the dissensions of his 
neighbors, " Blessed are the Peace-makers ; " f who abolish- 
ed trial by battle throughout his dominions ; who aimed to do 
justice to all his people, and to all neighbors, and in the ex- 
tremity of his last illness, on the sickening sands of Tunis, 
among the bequests of his spirit, enjoined on his son and 
successor, " in maintaining justice, to be inflexible and loyal, 
neither turning to the right hand nor to the left ! " | 

The history of the trial by battle will illustrate and bring 
home to your minds the chances of war, and the consequent 
folly and wickedness of submitting any question to its arbit- 
rament. As we revert to those early periods in which it 
prevailed, our minds are impressed by the barbarism which 
we behold ; we recoil, with horror, from the awful subjection 
of justice to brute force; from the impious profanation of the 
character of God in deeming him present in these outrages ; 
from the moral degradation out of which they sprang, and 
which they perpetuated ; we involve ourselves in our self- 
complacent virtue, and thank God that we are not as these 
men, that ours is, indeed, an age of light, while theirs was 
an age of darkness 1 

But are we aware that this monstrous and impious usage, 
which our enlightened reason so justly condemns in the cases 
of individuals, is openly avowed by our own country, and by 
the other countries of the earth, as a proper mode of deter- 
mining justice between them ? Be upon our heads and upon 
our age the judgment of barbarism, which we pronounce 



* Joinville, Hist, de St. Louis, p. 142 5 Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization en 
France, Tome IV. 151. 
t Benoist soient tuit li apaiseur, Joinville, pp. 143, 144; Guizot. 
^Sismondi, Histoire des Fran9. VIII. 196. 

4 



26 

upon those that have gone before ! At this moment, in this 
period of light, when the noon-day sun of civilization seems, 
to the contented souls of many, to be standing still in the 
heavens, as upon Gibeon, the relations between nations are 
governed by the same rules of barbarous, brutal force, which 
once prevailed between individuals. The dark ages have 
not passed away ; Erebus and black Night, born of Chaos, 
still brood over the earth ; nor shall we hail the clear day, 
until the mighty hearts of the nations shall be touched, 
as those of children, and the whole earth, individuals and 
nations alike, shall acknowledge oJie and the same rule of 
Right. 

Who has told you, fond man ! to regard that as a glory 
when performed by a nation, which is condemned as a crime 
and a barbarism, when committed by an individual ? In 
what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this in- 
congruous morality ? Where is it declared, that God, who is 
no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes ? Whence 
do you draw these partial laws of a powerful and impartial 
God ? Man is immortal ; but States are mortal. He has a 
higher destiny than States. Shall States be less amenable 
to the great moral laws ? Each individual is an atom of the 
mass. Must not the mass be like the individuals of which 
it is composed ? Shall the mass do what individuals may 
not do ? No. The same moral laws which govern individ- 
uals govern masses, as the same laws in nature prevail over 
large and small, controlling the fall of an apple and the orbits 
of the planets. It was the beautiful discovery of Newton, that 
gravity is a universal property of matter, a law obeyed by 
every particle in reference to every other particle, and con- 
necting the celestial mechanism with terrestrial phenomena. 
So the Rule of Right, which binds the single individual, 
binds two or three when gathered together — binds conven- 
tions and congregations of men — binds villages, towns and 
cities — binds states, nations and empires — clasps the whole 
human family in its seven-fold embrace ; nay more. 

Beyond the flaming bounds of place and time, 
The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 

it binds the angels of Heaven, the Seraphim, full of love, 
the Cherubim, full of knowledge : above all, it binds, in self- 
imposed bonds, a just and omnipotent God. It is of this, 
and not of any earthly law, that Hooker speaks in that mag- 
nificent period which sounds like an anthem ; " Of law no 



27 

less can be said, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her 
voice the harmony of the world ; all things in Heaven and 
earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, the 
greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and 
men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in 
different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent ad- 
miring her as the mother of their peace and joy." 

We are struck with horror and our hair stands on end, at 
the report of a single murder ; we think of the soul that has 
been hurried to its final account ; we seek the murderer ; and 
the law puts forth all its energies to secure his punishment. 
Viewed in the clear light of truth, what are war and battle but 
organized murder ; murder of malice afore-thought ; in cold 
blood ; through the operation of an extensive machinery of 
crime ; with innumerable hands ; at incalculable cost of 
money ; through subtle contrivances of cunning and skill ; 
or by the savage brutal assault ? Was not the Scythian 
right, when he said to Alexander, " Thou boastest that the 
only design of thy marches is to extirpate robbers ; thou thy- 
self art the greatest robber in the world." Among us one 
class of sea-robbers is hanged as pirates ; another is hailed 
with acclamation : 

Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hie diadema* 

It was amidst the thunders which made Sinai tremble, that 
God declared ; " Thou shalt not kill ; " and the voice of 
these thunders, with this commandment, has been prolonged 
to our own day in the echoes of Christian churches. What 
mortal shall restrain the application of these words ? Who 
on earth is empowered to vary or abridge the commandments 
of God ? Who shall presume to declare, that this injunction 
was directed, not to nations, but to individuals only ; not to 
many but to one only ; that one man may not kill, but that 
many may ; that it is forbidden to each individual to destroy 
the life of a single human being, but that it is not forbidden 
to a nation to cut off by the sword a whole people ? 

When shall the St. Louis of the nations arise ? the Chris- 
tian ruler or Christian people, who shall proclaim to the 
whole earth, that henceforward for ever the great trial by hat- 
tie shall cease ; that it is the duty and policy of nations to 

* Juvenal, Sat. XIII. 105. The ancient laws of Ina recognize numbers as the 
only distinction between an army and a band of robbers ; " Fures appellamus soci- 
etatem septem hominum; et septem usque ad XXXV turnam; et deinde esto 
exercitus." 



28 

establish love between each other ; and in all respects, at all 
times, towards all persons, as well as their own people, as the 
people of other lands, to be governed by the sacred rules of 
right, as between man and man ! May God speed the com- 
ing of that day ! 

I have already alluded, in the early part of my remarks, to 
some of the obstacles to be encountered by the advocate of 
Peace. One of these is the war-like tone of the literature, 
by which our minds and opinions are formed. The world 
has supped so full with battles, that all its inner modes of 
thought, and many of its rules of conduct seem to be incar- 
nadined with blood ; as the bones of swine, fed on madder, 
are said to become red. But I now pass this by, though a 
most fruitful theme, and hasten to other topics. I propose 
to consider in succession, very briefly, some of those influ- 
ences and prejudices, which are most powerful in keeping 
alive the delusion of war. 

1. One of the most important of these is the prejudice to 
a certain extent in its favor founded on the belief in its ne- 
cessity. The consciences of all good men condemn it as a 
crime, a sin ; even the soldier, whose profession it is, con- 
fesses that it is to be resorted to only in the last necessity. 
But a benevolent and omnipotent God cannot render it 
necessary to commit a crime. When war is called a neces- 
sity, it is meant, of course, that its object cannot be gained 
in any other way. Now I think that it has already appeared 
with distinctness, approaching demonstration, that the pro- 
fessed object of war, which is justice between nations, is in 
no respect promoted by war ; that force is not justice, nor in 
any way conducive to justice ; that the eagles of victory can 
be the emblems only of successful force and not of estab- 
lished right.* Justice can be obtained only by the exercise 
of the reason and judgment ; but these are silent in the din 
of arms. Justice is without passion ; but war lets loose all 
the worst passions of our nature, while " high arbiter Chance 
more embroils the fray." The age has passed in which a 
nation, within the enchanted circle of civilization, will make 

* Le recours a la force, soil par le combat judiciaire, soit par ]a guerre priv^e, 
e tait U mode le plus commun de mettre fin aux proces. Mais la force n'est pas 
la justice; les plies grossiers esprits ne lea confondent pas long temps. La necea- 
site d'un autre systeme judiciaire, d'un veritable jugemeiit,devintbient6t evidente, 
Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tome IV. 89. 



29 

war upon its neighbor, for any professed purpose of booty or 
vengeance. It does " nought in hate, but all in honor." 
There are professions even of tenderness which mingle with 
the first mutterings of the dismal strife. Each of the two 
governments, as if conscience-struck at the abyss into which 
it is about to plunge, seeks to fix on the other the charge of 
hostile aggression, and to assume to itself the ground of de- 
fending some right ; some stolen Texas ; some distant, worth- 
less Oregon. Like Pontius Pilate, it vainly washes its hands 
of innocent blood, and straightway allows a crime at which 
the whole heavens are darkened, and two kindred countries 
are severed, as the veil of the Temple was rent in twain. 

The various modes, which have been proposed for the de- 
termination of disputes between nations, are Negotiation, 
Arbitration, Mediation, and a Congress of Nations ;* all of 
them practicable and calculated to secure peaceful justice. 
Let it not be said then that v/ar is a necessity ; and may 
our country aim at the true glory of taking the lead in the 
recognition of these, as the only proper modes of determin- 
ing justice between nations ! Such a glory, unlike the earthly 
fame of battles, shall be immortal as the stars, dropping per- 
petual light upon the souls of men ! 

2. Another prejudice in favor of war is founded on the 
practice of nations, past and present. There is no crime or 
enormity in morals, which may not find the support of human 
example, often on a most extended scale. But it is not to be 
urged in our day that we are to look for a standard of duty 
in the conduct of vain, mistaken, fallible man. It is not in 
the power of man, by any subtle alchemy, to transmute 
wrong into right. Because war is according to the practice 
of the world, it does not follow that it is right. For ages 
the world worshipped false gods ; but these gods were not 
the less false, because all bowed before them. At this moment 
the larger portion of mankind are Heathen ; but Heathenism 
is not true. It was once the practice of nations to slaughter 
prisoners of war ; but even the spirit of war recoils now from 
this bloody sacrifice. In Sparta, theft, instead of being exe- 
crated as a crime, was dignified into an art and an accom- 
plishment, and as such admitted into the system of youthful 
education ; and even this debasing practice, established by 

* For a sketch of the labors and examples which tend to the establishment of a 
System qf Arbitration, or a Congress of Nations, see Appendix, Note C. 



30 

local feeling, is enlightened, like war, by an instance of uncon- 
querable firmness, which is a barbaric counterfeit of virtue. 
The Spartan youth, who allowed the fox concealed under 
his robe to eat into his heart, is an example of mistaken 
fortitude, not unlike that which we are asked to admire in 
the soldier. Other illustrations of this character crowd upon 
the mind ; but I will not dwell upon them. We turn with 
disgust from Spartan cruelty and the wolves of Taygetus ; 
from the awful cannibalism of the Feejee Islands ; from 
the profane rites of innumerable savages ; from the crushing 
Juggernaut ; from the Hindoo widow lighting her funeral 
pyre ; from the Indian dancing at the stake. But had not all 
these, in their respective places and days, like war, the sanc- 
tion of established usage ? 

But it is often said, " Let us not be wiser than our fathers." 
Rather let us try to excel our fathers in wisdom. Let us 
imitate what in them was good, but let us not bind ourselves, 
as in the chains of Fate, by their imperfect example. There 
are principles which are higher than human examples. Ex- 
amples are to be followed when they accord with the sugges- 
tions of duty. But he is unwise and wicked, who attempts 
to lean upon these, rather than upon those truths, which, like 
the Everlasting Arm, cannot fail ! 

In all modesty be it said, we have lived to little purpose, 
if we are not wiser than the generations that have gone before 
us. It is the grand distinction of man that he is a progres- 
sive being ; that his reason at the present day is not merely 
the reason of a single human being, but that of the whole 
human race, in all ages from which knowledge has descended, 
in all lands from which it has been borne away. We are the 
heirs to an inheritance of knowledge, which has been accu- 
mulating from generation to generation. The child is now 
taught at his mother's knee the orbits of the heavenly bodies. 

Where worlds on worlds compose one Universe ; 

the nature of this globe ; the character of the tribes of men 
by which it is covered, and the geography of nations, all of 
which were far beyond the ken of the most learned of other 
days. It is, therefore, true, as has been said, that antiquity 
is the real infancy of man ; it is then that he is immature, 
ignorant, wayward, childish, selfish, finding his chief happi- 
ness in pleasures of sense, all unconscious of the higher 
delights of knowledge and of love. The animal part of his 



31 

nature reigns over his soul, and he is driven on by the gross 
impulses of force. He seeks contests, war and blood. But 
we are advanced from the childhood of man ; reason and the 
kindlier virtues of age, repudiating and abhorring force, 
now bear sway. We are the true Ancients. The single 
lock on the battered forehead of Old Time is thinner now than 
when our fathers attempted to grasp it ; the hour-glass has 
been turned often since ; the scythe is heavier laden with the 
work of death. 

Let us cease, then, to look for a lamp to our feet, in the 
feeble tapers that glimmer in the sepulchres of the Past. 
Rather let us hail those ever-burning lights above, in whose 
beams is the brightness of noon-day ! 

3. There is a topic to which I allude with diffidence ; but 
in the spirit of frankness. It is the influence which war, 
though condemned by Christ, has derived from the Chris- 
tian Church. When Constantine on one of his marches, at 
the head of his army, beheld the luminous trophy of the 
cross in the sky right above the meridian sun, inscribed with 
these words, By this conquer, had his soul been penetrated 
by the true spirit of Him, whose precious symbol it was, he 
would have found in it no inspiration to the spear and the 
sword. He would have received the lesson of self-sacrifice, 
as from the lips of the Saviour, and would have learned that 
it was not by earthly weapons that any true victory was to 
be won. The pride of conquest would have been rebuked, 
and the bauble sceptre of Empire would have fallen from his 
hands. By this conquer ; that is, by patience, suffering, for- 
giveness of evil, by all those virtues of which the cross is the 
affecting token, conquer; and the victory shall be greater 
than any in the annals of Roman conquest ; it may not find 
a place in the records of man ; but it shall appear in the 
register of everlasting life. 

The Christian Church, after the first centuries of its exist- 
ence, failed to discern the peculiar spiritual beauty of the 
faith which it professed. Like Constantine, it found new 
incentives to war in the religion of Peace ; and such has 
been its character, let it be said fearlessly, even to our own 
day. The Pope of Rome, the asserted head of the church, 
the Vicegerent of Christ on earth; whose seal is a fisherman, 
on whose banner is a Lamb before the Holy Cross, assumed 
the command of armies, often mingling the thunders of bat- 



32 

tie with those of the Vatican. The dagger which projected 
from the sacred vestments of the Archbishop de Retz, as he 
appeared in the streets of Paris, was called by the people, 
" the Archbishop's Prayer Book." We read of mitred pre- 
lates in armor of proof, and seem still to catch the jingle of 
the golden spurs of the bishops in the streets of Cologne. 
The sword of knighthood was consecrated by the church ; 
and priests were often the expert masters in military exer- 
cises. I have seen at the gates of the Papal Palace in 
Rome, a constant guard of Swiss soldiers ; I have seen, too, 
in our own streets a show, as incongruous and as inconsistent, 
a pastor of a Christian church parading as the chaplain of a 
military array ! Ay ! more than this ; some of us have 
heard, within a few short weeks, in a Christian pulpit, from 
the lips of an eminent Christian divine, a sermon in which 
we are encouraged to serve the God of Battles* and, as 
citizen soldiers, to fight for Peace ;f a sentiment, which 
can find no support in the Religion of Him who has expressly 
enjoined, when one cheek is smitten to turn the other, and 
to which we listen with pain and mortification from the lips 
of one, who has voluntarily become a minister of Christian 
truth; alas! in his mind inferior to that of the Heathen, 
who declared that he preferred the unjustest peace to the 
justest tvar.'l 

And who is the God of Battles ! It is Mars ; man-slay- 
ing, blood-polluted, city-smiting Mars !<§> Him we cannot 
adore. It is not He who binds the sweet influences of the 



* Deo imperante, quern adesse bellantibus credunt, are the appropriate words of 
astonishment by which Tacitus describes the barbarous superstition of the an- 
cient Germans. — De Hloribus Germ. ^ 7. It was afterwards on the (Jerman 
soil, that Frederick of Prussia said that he always found the God of Battles to be 
on the side of the strongest regiments. When it was proposed to him to adopt 
as an inscription for his banner, that was soon to flout the sky of Silesia, " For 
God and Country," he rejected the first words — saying it was not proper to intro- 
duce the name of the Deity in the quarrels of men. 

t Lord Abington said, May 30th, 1795, in the House of Lords : " TTie best road 
to Peace, my Lords, is War; and War carried on in the same manner in which 
we are taught to worship our Creator, namely with all our souls, with all our 
minds, with all our hearts, and with all our strength !" 

i Iniqmssimam pacem, juslissimo bello antefero ,ztq the words of Cicero. Only 
eight days after Franklin had placed his name to the Treaty of Peace, which 
acknowledged the independence of his country, he wrote to a friend : " may we 
never see another war, for, in my opinion, there never was a good war, nor a bad 
peace." It was with great reluctance, that 1 here seemed to depart for a moment 
from so great a theme to allude to any person ; but the person and the theme 
here become united. I cannot refrain from the effort to tear this iron branch of 
War from the golden tree of Christian truth, even though a voice come forth from 
the breaking bough. For a few observations on Dr. Vinton's Sermon, see Appen- 
dix, notes A and B. 

^^^QBg,^'AqEg^ ^QOToloiye fiiaiqiovE, XEixeainXr^ia. II. V. 31. | 



33 

Pleiades, and looses the bands of Orion ; who causes the 
sun to shine on the just and the unjust ; who tempers the 
wind to the shorn lamb ; who distils the oil of gladness upon 
every upright heart ; the fountain of Mercy and Goodness, 
the God of Justice and Love. The God of Battles is not 
the God of Christians ; to him can ascend none of the 
prayers of Christian thanksgiving ; for him there can be no 
words of worship in Christian temples ; no swelling anthem 
to peal the note of praise. 

There is now floating in this harbor a ship of the line of 
our country. Many of you have, perhaps, pressed its deck, 
and observed with admiration the completeness which pre- 
vails in all its parts ; its lithe masts and complex net-work of 
ropes ; its thick wooden walls, within which are more than 
the soldiers of Ulysses; its strong defences, and its numerous 
dread and rude-throated engines of war. There each Sab- 
bath, amidst this armament of blood, while the wave comes 
gently plashing against the frowning sides, from a pulpit sup- 
ported by a cannon, or by the side of a cannon, in repose 
now, but ready to awake its dormant thunder, charged with 
death, a Christian preacher addresses the officers and crew ! 
May his instructions carry strength and succor to their souls ! 
But he cannot pronounce in such a place, those highest words 
of the Master he professes, " Blessed are the Peace-makers ;" 
" Love your Enemies ;" " Render not evil for evil." Like 
Macbeth's " Amen," they must stick in his throat. 

It cannot be doubted that this strange and unblessed con- 
junction of the clergy with war, has had no little influence in 
blinding the world to the truth now beginning to be recog- 
nized, that Christianity forbids war in all cases. 

Individual interests are mixed up with prevailing errors, 
and are concerned in maintaining them to such an extent, that 
it is not surprising that military men yield reluctantly to this 
truth. They are naturally in this matter, like lawyers, ac- 
cording to Voltaire, " the conservators of ancient barbarous 
usages ;" but that these usages should obtain countenance in 
the Christian church is one of those anomalies, which make 
us feel the weakness of our nature and the elevation of 
Christian truth. It is important to observe, as an unanswer- 
able fact of history, that for some time after the Apostles, 
while the lamp of Christianity burnt pure and bright, not 
only the Fathers of the church held it unlawful for Chris- 
tians to bear arms, but those who came within its pale, 
5 



34 

abstained from the use of arms, although at the cost of their 
hves. Marcellus the Centurion, threw down his mihtary 
belt at the head of the legion, and in the face of the stand- 
ards declared with a loud voice, that he would no longer 
serve in the army, for he had become a Christian ; and many- 
others followed his example. It was not until Christianity 
became corrupted, that its followers became soldiers, and its 
priests learned to minister at the altar of the God of Battles.* 

Thee to defend the Moloch priest prefers 
The prayer of Hate, and bellows to the herd 
That Deity, accomplice Deity, 
In the fierce jealousy of waked wrath 
Will go forth with our armies and our fleets 
To scatter the red ruin on their foes ! 
O blasphemy I to mingle fiendish deeds 
With blessedness ! t 

A motion has been brought forward in Congress, to dispense 
with the services of chaplains in the army and navy, mainly 
on account of the incompatibility between the principles of the 
Gospel and the practice of War. It is to be hoped that 
what God has placed so far asunder, may no longer be joined 
together by man. If chaplains are to be employed, it should 
be to preach the religion they profess as to the Heathen, and 
not to offer incense to the idol of war. 

When will Christian ministers look for their faith, not to 
the ideas, opinions and practices of the people by whom they 
are surrounded, but to the written words of the texts from 
which they preach ? It has been said of a monarch of Eng- 
land, that he " read Gospel truth in Anna Boleyn's eyes."^ 
Not less hyperbolical and impossible is their discernment, who 
can find in the flashing bayonet, any token of Peace, any 
illumination of Christian Love. That truly great man, the 
beloved Channing, whose spirit speaks to us from no scep- 
tered urn, but from that sweet grassy bed at Mount Auburn, 
says : " When I think of duelling and war in the Chris- 
tian world, and then of the superiority to the world and 
the unbounded love and forbearance which characterize 

* This subject, so interesting to the student of history , and to the conscientious 
inquirer into the true signification of the Gospel, has been treated with fullness 
and learning by Mr. Clarkson in his Essay on the Doctrines and Practice of the 
Early Christians as they relate to war. Mr. Jay, in his recent address before the 
Peace Society, justly charges the Christian Church with "awful delinquencies 
on the subject of war, and directs the attention of her members to the duty of 
repentance and reformation." He sustains the charge by numerous illustrations 
of the conduct of the clergy, through a succession of ages, but particularly in 
our own day. He finds the English Episcopal Church peculiarly reprehensible: 
and his testimony on this point is of special authority, from his known eminence 
as a lay member of the sister Church in the United States. 

t Religious Musings by Coleridge, written Christmas Eve of 1794. 



35 

our religion, I am struck with the Httle progress which Chris- 
tianity has as yet made." 

One of the beautiful pictures, adorning the dome of a 
Church in Rome, by that master of art, whose immortal colors 
breathe as with the voice of a Poet, the Divine Raftaelle, 
represents Mars, in the attitude of war, with a drawn sword 
uplifted and ready to strike, while an unarmed Angel from 
behind, with gentle but irresistible force, arrests and holds 
the descending arm. Such is the true image of Christian 
duty ; nor can I readily perceive the difference in principle 
between those ministers of the Gospel, who themselves gird 
on the sword, as in the olden time, and those others, who, 
unarmed, and in customary suit of solemn black, lend the 
sanction of their presence to the martial array, or to any form 
of preparation for war. The drummer, who pleaded that he 
did not fight, was held more responsible for the battle than 
the mere soldier ; for it was the sound of his drum that in- 
flamed the flagging courage of the troops. 

4. From the prejudices engendered by the Church, I pass 
to the prejudices engendered by the army itself; prejudices 
having their immediate origin more particularly in military 
life, but unfortunately diffusing themselves, in widening 
though less apparent circles, throughout the community. I 
allude directly to what is called the point of honor, early 
child of chivalry, the living representative in our day of an 
age of barbarism. It is difficult to define what is so evanes- 
cent, so impalpable, so chimerical, so unreal ; and yet which 
exercises such power over many men, and controls the rela- 
tions of states. As a little water, which has fallen into the 
crevice of a rock, under the congelation of winter, swells till 
it bursts the thick and stony fibres ; so a word, or a slender 
act, dropping into the heart of man, under the hardening 
influence of this pernicious sentiment, dilates till it rends in 
pieces the sacred depository of human affections, while Hate 
and the demon Strife, no longer restrained, are let loose 
abroad. The musing Hamlet saw the strange and unnatural 
power of this sentiment, when his soul pictured to his con- 
templations 



the army of such mass and charge. 

Led by a delicate and tender prince 
Exposing what is mortal and unsure 
To all that fortune, death and danger, dare 
Evenfor an egg-shell ; 



36 

and when he says, with a point which has given to this sen- 
timent its strongest and most popular expression, 



• Rightly to be great 



Is not to stir without great argument ; 
But greatly to find quarrel m a straw 
yVhe7i honor's at the stake. 

And when is honor at stake ? This question opens again 
the views with which I commenced, and with which I hope 
to close this discourse. Honor can be only at stake where 
justice and happiness are at stake ; it can never depend on 
an egg-shell, or a straw ; it can never depend on an impotent 
word of anger or foll}^ not even if that word be followed by 
a blow. In fine, true honor is to be fouad in the highest 
moral and intellectual excellence, in the dignity of the hu- 
man soul, in its nearest approach to those qualities which we 
reverence as the attributes of God. Our community frowns 
with indignation upon the profaneness of the duel, which has 
its rise in this irrational point of honor. But are they aware 
that they themselves indulge the sentiment, on a gigantic 
scale, when they recognize what is called the honor of the 
country, as a proper ground for war ? We have already seen 
that justice is in no respect promoted by war. Is true honor 
promoted where justice is not ? 

But the very word honor, as used by the world, does not 
express any elevated sentiment. How infinitely below the 
sentiment of duty ! It is a word of easy virtue, that has 
been prostituted to the most opposite characters and transac- 
tions. From the field of Pavia, where France suffered one 
of the greatest reverses in her annals, Francis writes to his 
mother : '' all is lost except honor." At a later day, the 
renowned cook, the grand Vatel, in a paroxysm of grief and 
mortification at the failure of two dishes expected on the table, 
exclaimed, " I have lost my honor."* Montesquieu, whose 

* Accable d'embarras, Vatel est averti 

Que deux tables en vain reclamaient leur r6ti ; 

II prend pour en trouver une peine inutile. 

" Ah !" dit-il, s'adressant a son ami Gourville, 

De larmes, de sanglots, de douleur suffoque, 

" Je suis perdu d'honneur, deux rotis ont manques !" 

Berchoux. 
This scene is also described, with the accustomed coldness and brilliancy of 
her fashionable pen, by Madame de Sevigne, (Lettres L and LI, Tom. I. pp. 164, 
68.) In the same place she recounts the death of this culinary martyr. Dis- 
appointed by the failure of the purveyors to arrive with the turbots for an enter- 
tainment in proper season, he withdrew to his chamber, where he placed his 
sword against the door, and stabbed himself to the heart, but it was not until 
the third blow, after giving himself two not mortal, that he fell dead. "The 
fish now arrives from all quarters, they seek Vatel to distribute it; they go to 



37 

writings are a constellation of epigrams, places it in direct 
contrast with virtue. He represents what he calls the preju- 
dice of honor as the animating principle of monarchy, while 
virtue is that of a republic, saying that in well governed 
monarchies almost everybody will be a good citizen, but it 
will be rare to meet with a really good man.* By an instinct 
that points to the truth, we do not apply this term to the 
high columnar virtues which sustain and decorate life, to pa- 
rental affection, to justice, to the attributes of God. We do 
not speak of an honorable father, an honorable mother, an 
honorable judge, an honorable angel, an honorable God. In 
such sacred connections we feel beyond the force of any 
argument, the vulgar and debasing character of the senti- 
ment to which it refers. 

The degrading rule of honor is founded in the supposed 
necessity of resenting by force, a supposed injury, whether 
by word or act.f But suppose such an injury is received, 
sullying, as is falsely imagined, the character; is it wiped 
away by a resort to force, by descending to the brutal level 
of its author ? " Could I have wiped your blood from my 
conscience as easily as I can this insult from my face," said 
a Marshal of France, greater on this occasion than on any 
field of fame, " I would have laid you dead at my feet." It 
is Plato, reporting the angelic wisdom of Socrates, who de- 
clares in one of those beautiful dialogues, which shine with 
stellar light across the ages, that it is more shameful to do a 

his room, they knock, they force open the door; he is found bathed in blood. 
They hasten to tell the Prince, [the great Conde] who is in despair; the Duke 
wept; it was on Vatel that his journey from Burgundy hinged. The Prince 
related what had passed to the King, with marks of the deepest sorrow. It 
was attributed to the high sense of honor which he had after his own way (on dit 
que c'etoit a force d'avoir de I'honneur a sa maniere. He was highly com- 
mended; his courage was praised and blamed at the same time." The Epistle 
Dedicatory prefixed to the concluding volume of the Almanac Des Gourmands, 
addressing the shade of Vatel, says; " So noble a death secures you, venerable 
shade, the most glorious immortality ! You have proved that the fanaticism of 
honor can exist in the kitchen as well as in the camp, and that the spit and sauce- 
pan have also their Catos and their Dcciuses." " Enfin," are the words of a 
French Vaudeville, " Manette, voila ce que c'etoit que Madame de Sevigne, 
et Vatel, ce sont les gens la qui ont honors le siecle de Louis Quatorze." See 
London Quarterly Rev., Vol. 54. p. 122. 

* Montesquieu. Esprit des Louis, Liv. 3. cap. 5, 6, 7. 

t Don Pedre. Souhaitez-vous quelque chose de moi ? 

Hali. Oui, un conseil sur un fait d'honneur. Je sais qu'en ces matieres il 
est mal-aise de trouver un cavalier plus consomme que vous. 

Seigneur, ^'ai rccu un soufflet. Vous savez ce qu'est un soufflet, lorsqu'il se 
donne a main ouverte sur le beau milieu de la joue. J'ai ce soufflet fort smj- le 
coeur ; et je suis dans I'incertitude si, pour me venger de V affront, je dois me 
battre avec mon homme, ou bien lefaire assassiner. 

Don Pedre. Assassiner c'est le plus sur et le plus court chemin. — Moliere, 
Le Sidlien, Sc. 13. 



38 

wrong than to receive a ivrong.* And this benign sentiment 
commends itself, alike to the Christian, who is told to render 
o-ood for evil, and to the universal heart of man. But who 
that confesses its truth, can vindicate a resort to force, for the 
sake of honor ? Better far to receive the blow that a false 
morality has thought degrading, than that it should be re- 
venged by force. Better that a nation should submit to what 
is wrong, rather than vainly seek to maintain its honor by the 
great crime of war. 

It seems that in ancient Athens, as in unchristianized 
Christian lands, there were sophists, who urged that to suffer 
was unbecoming a man, and would draw down upon him 
incalculable evils. The following passage will show the 
manner in which the moral cowardice of these persons of 
little faith was rebuked by him, whom the Gods pronounced 
wisest of men : "These things being so, let us inquire what 
it is you reproach me with ; whether it is well said, or not, 
that I, forsooth, am not able to assist either myself, or any of 
my friends or my relations, or to save them from the greatest 
dangers, but that, like the outlaws, I am at the mercy of 
any one, who may choose to smite me on the temple — and 
this was the strong point in your argument — or to take away 
my property, or to drive me out of the city, or (to take the 
extreme case) to kill me ; now, according to your argument, 
to be so situated is the most shameful thing of all. But my 
view is — a view many times expressed already, but there is 
no objection to its being stated again : — my view, I say, is, 
O CaUicles, that to be struck unjustly on the temple is not 
most shameful, nor to have my body mutilated, nor my jjurse 
cut ; but to strike me and mine unjustly, and to mutilate me 
and to cut my purse is more shameful and worse ; and steal- 
ing too, and enslaving, and housebreaking, and in general, 
doing any wrong whatever to me and mine is more shame- 
ful and worse for him who does the ivrong, than for me 
who suffer it. These things thus established in the former 
arguments, as I maintain, are secured and bound, even if the 
expression be somewhat too rustical, with iron and adaman- 
tine arguments, and unless you, or some one more vigorous 
than you, can break them, it is impossible for any one, speak- 
ing otherwise than I now speak, to speak well : since for my 
part, / always have the same thing to say, that I know not 



* This proposition is enforced by Socrates with admirable and unanswerable 
reasoning and illustration, throughout the whole of the Gorgias. 



39 

how these things are, but that of all whom I have ever dis- 
coursed with as now, not one is able to say otherwise without 
being ridiculous." Such is the wisdom of Socrates.* 

But the modern point of honor does not find a place in 
warhke antiquity. Themistocles at Salamis did not send a 
cartel to the Spartan commander, when threatened by a 
blow. " Strike, but hear," was the response of that firm 
nature, which felt that true honor was to be gained only in 
the performance of duty. It was in the depths of modern 
barbarism, in the age of chivalry, that this sentiment shot up 
in the wildest and most exuberant fancies ; not a step was 
taken without reference to it ; no act was done which had 
not some point tending to the " bewitching duel," and every 
stage in the combat, from the ceremonies of its beginning to 
its deadly close, were measured by this fantastic law.f The 
Chevalier Bayard, the cynosure of chivalry, the knight with- 
out fear and without reproach, in a contest with the Spaniard 
Don Alonzo de Soto Mayor, by a feint struck him such a 
blow in the throat, that despite the gorget, the weapon pen- 
etrated four fingers deep. The wounded Spaniard grasjjed 
his adversary, and, struggling with him, they both rolled on 
the ground, when Bayard, drawing his dagger, and thrusting 
its point in the nostrils of the Spaniard, exclaimed, " Senor 
Alonzo, surrender, or you are a dead man !" A speech 
which appeared superfluous, as Don Diego de Guignones, his 
second, exclaimed, " Senor Bayard, he is dead ; you have 
conquered." Bayard, says the chronicler, would have given 
one hundred thousand crowns to spare his life ; but, he now 
fell upon his knees, kissed the ground three times and then 
dragged his dead enemy out of the camp, saying to the sec- 
ond of his fallen foe, " Senor Don Diego, have I done 
enough ?" To which the other piteously replied, " too 
much, Senor, for the honor of Spain !" when Bayard very 
generously presented him with the corpse, although it was 
his right, by the laws of honor, to do whatever he thought 

* Gorgias, Cap. LXIV. It appears that Cicero read the Gorgias diligently at 
Athens ; but his admiration was bestowed chiefly upon its distinguished rhetorical 
excellence. (De Oratore, I. 11.) If his soul had been penetrated by its sublime 
morality, he never could have written ; Fortes igitur et magnanimi sunt habendi, 
non, qui faciunt, s«d qui propulsant injuriam. De Offic. Lib. I. cap. 19. This 
is an instance of the fickle eclectic philosophy of the great Roman, which renders 
his writings so uncertain a rule of conduct. 

t Nobody can forget the humorous picture of the progress of a quarrel to a 
duel, through the seven degrees of Touchstone in As You Like it. Act 5, 
Scene 4. 



% 



40 

proper with it ; an act which is highly commended by Bran- 
tome, who thinks it difficult to say which did him most 
Jionor — not having ignominiously dragged the body like the 
carcass of a dog by a leg out of the field, or having conde- 
scended to fight while laboring under an ague !* 

If such a transaction conferred honor on the brightest son 
of chivalry, we may understand therefrom something of the 
real character of that age, the departure of which has been 
lamented with such touching but inappropriate eloquence. 
Do not condescend to draw a great rule of conduct from 
such a period. Let the point of honor stay with the dag- 
gers, the swords and the weapons of combat by which it was 
guarded ; let it appear only with its inseparable companions, 
the bowie-knife, and the pistol ! 

Be ours the standard of conduct derived, not from the de- 
gradation of our nature, though it affects the semblance of 
sensibility and refinement, but having its sources in the loftiest 
attributes of man, in truth, in justice, in duty ; and may this 
standard, which governs our relations to each other, be recog- 
nized among the nations ! When shall we behold the dawn- 
ing of that happy day, harbinger of infinite happiness beyond, 
in which nations shall feel that it is better to receive a 
wrong than to do a wrong. 

Apply this principle to our relations with England at this 
moment. Suppose that proud monarchy, refusing all sub- 
mission to negotiation or arbitration, should absorb the whole 
Territory of Oregon into her own overgrown dominions, and 
add, at the mouth of the Columbia River, a new morning 
drum-beat to the national airs with which she has encircled 
the earth ; who, then, is in the attitude of the truest honor, Eng- 
land, who has appropriated, by an unjust act, what is not her 
own, or the United States, the victim of the injustice ? f 

5. There is still another influence which stimulates war,, 
and interferes with the natural attractions of Peace ; I refer 
to a selfish and exaggerated love of country, leading to its 
physical aggrandizement, and the strengthening of its institu- 

■* Millingen on Duels, I. 81, 82. 

t If this view needs any confirmation in the minds of just and reasonable men, 
having a true regard for the happiness and real greatness of their country, it may 
be found in the clear and weighty reasoning of President Wayiand on War, in his 
Elements of Morals, -which is in such harmony with the great truths sustained 
throughout this Oration that I have taken the liberty to transfer some pages of it 
to the Appendix, JMote E. 



41 

tions at the expense of other countries. Our minds, nursed by 
the literature of antiquity, have imbibed the narrow sentiment 
of heathen patriotism.* Exclusive love for the land of birth 
was a part of the religion of Greece and Rome. It is an 
indication of the lowness of their moral nature, that this 
sentiment was so exclusive, and so material in its character. 
The Oracle directed the returning Roman to kiss his mother, 
and he kissed the Mother Earth. Agamemnon, on regain- 
ing his home after a perilous separation of more than ten years 
at the siege of Troy, before addressing his family, his friends, 
his countrymen, first salutes Argos : 

By your leave, Lords, first Argos I salute. + 

The school-boy cannot forget the cry of the victim of Verres, 
which was to stay the descending fasces of the lictor, " I am 
a Roman citizen ; " nor those other words sounding in the 
dark Past, " How sweet it is to die for one's country !" 
The Christian cry did not rise, " I am a man ;" the Christian 
ejaculation did not swell the soul, " How sweet it is to die 
for duty ! " The beautiful genius of Cicero, at times instinct 
with truth almost divine, did not ascend to that highest 
heaven, where is taught, that all mankind are neighbors and 
kindred, and that the relations of fellow-countryman are less 
holy than those of fellow-man. To the love of universal 
man may be applied those words by which the great Roman 
elevated his selfish patriotism to a virtue, when he said that 
country alone embraced all the charities of all.X Attach this 



* The legislation of Rome, which has exercised such an influence over mankind, 
was inspired by selfishness. Self was at the foundation of all rights. Property 
was held under rigorous and exclusive laws, which knew nothing of the spirit of 
accommodation, or of good neighborhood. There were no common partition 
walls ; but houses stood apart (insula), to avoid all contact which could be only 
hostile In domestic life, the head of the family (vater famihas) was a despot. 
He held for a long time, the right of life and death over his wife a.id children ; 
having no obligations towards them, but only rights over them. This great power 
was not .riven for the benefit of the children ; securing to them a guardian in their 
immature years, but selfishly, unnaturally, for the exclusive benefit of the father, 
to whom belonged all the acquisitions of the son. VS^e may well suspect any 
principle of duty, public or private, which has its rise in fountains so strongly 
impregnated with the iron of the soil. For an interesting view of the true char- 
acter of the Roman Law, see Kleimrath, Travaux sur I'Histoire de droit Fran9ais, 

"^^"Agame'mnon of iEschylus ; translated by Symmons. p. 73. Cato in a didactic 
work says to the farmer on his return home. Primum Larem salutato. 

t s'edquum omnia ratione, animoque lustraris, omnium societatum nulla est 
gravior nulla carior, quam ea, quae cum republica est unicuique nostrum. Can 
Sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares ; sed omnes omnium cantates patria 
una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem oppetere si ei sit profutu- 
rus 7 De Offic. Lib*^ I, Cap. 17, § 57. It is curious to observe how Cicero puts 
aside that expression of true Humanity, which fell from Terence, Humam nihU a 

6 



42 

admired phrase for a moment to the single idea of country, 
and you will see how contracted are its charities compared 
with the world-wide circle of Christian love, whose neighbor 
is the suffering man, though at the farthest pole. Such a 
sentiment would dry up those fountains of benevolence, which 
now diffuse themselves in precious waters in distant unenlight- 
ened lands, bearing the blessings of truth to the icy mountains 
of Greenland, and the coral islands of the Pacific sea. 

It has been a part of the policy of rulers, to encourage 
this exclusive patriotism ; and the people of modern times 
have each inherited the feeling of Antiquity. I do not know 
that any one nation is in a condition to reproach the other 
with this patriotic selfishness. All are selfish. Among us, 
the sentiment has become active, while it has derived new 
force from^the point with which it has been expressed. An 
officer of our Navy, one of the so called heroes nurtured by 
war, whose name has been praised in churches, has gone 
beyond all Greek, all Roman example. " Our country, be 
she right or wrong,'" was his exclamation ; a sentiment 
dethroning God and enthroning the devil, whose flagitious 
character should be rebuked by every honest heart.* " Our 
country, our whole country, and nothing but our couiitry," 
are other words which have often been painted on banners, 
and echoed by the voices of innumerable multitudes. Cold 
and dreary, narrow and selfish, would be this life, if nothing 
but our country occupied our souls ; if the thoughts that 
wander through eternity, if the infinite affections of our nature, 
were restrained to that spot of earth where we have been 
placed by the accident of birth. 

I do not inculcate an indifference to country. We incline, 

me alienum puio. He says, Est enim difficilis cura rerum alienarum. De Offic. 
Lib. l,Cap. 9. Since the delivery of this Oration,! have met the following 
opportune testimony to the truth of the text, in the journals and opinions of the 
late Blanco White, one of the most ingenuous and conscientious characters of 
the age. '' Would you have a clear, practical conception of Virtue ? Study tha 
early, the mythic history of Rome, and try to sympathize with her heroes, — those 
men who lived only for the State ; who appear to have lost their own personality, 
and to have identified themselves with tfie republic. Having done this, reflect 
upon the incompleteness (and we may well say, absurdity) of limiting our moral 
relations to any portion of the whole mass of mankind, and embrace the immova- 
ble conviction, on this point, that every individual man belongs to the whole race, 
or, more properly speaking, to the Universe, more truly than Roman patriots 
conceived themselves to belong to the State. And now you will have obtained 
the true idea of national real virtue, if you conceive your duties to God and his 
creation to be exactly analogous to those of those ancient heroes." Blanco 
White's Journals and Correspondence, Vol. H. pp. 299, 300, 301. 

* Unlike this is what lias been said of the virtuous Andrew f'letcher, in the day* 
of the English Revolution of 1688, who "would lose his life to serve his country, 
but would not do a base thing to save it." Mackintosh, Eth. Philosophy. 



by a natural sentiment, to the spot where we were born, to 
the fields which witnessed the sports of childhood, to the seat 
of youthful studies, and to the institutions under which we 
have been trained. The finger of God writes in indelible 
colors all these things upon the heart of man, so that in the 
dread extremities of death, he reverts in fondness to early 
associations, and longs for a draught of cold water from the 
bucket in his father's well. This sentiment is independent 
of reflection, for it begins before reflection, grows with our 
growth, and strengthens with our strength. It is blind in its 
nature ; and it is the duty of each of us to take care that it 
does not absorb the whole character.* In the moral night 
which has enveloped the world, each nation, thus far, has 
lived ignorant and careless, to much extent, of the interests 
of others, which it imperfectly saw ; but this thi(?k darkness 
has now been scattered, and we begin to discern, all gilded 
by the beams of morning, the distant mountain-peaks of other 
lands. We find that God has not placed us on this earth 
alone ; that there are other nations, equally with us, children 
of his protecting care. 

The curious spirit goes further, and while it recognizes an 
inborn sentiment of attachment to the place of birth, inquires 
into the nature of the allegiance which is due to the State. 
The old idea, still too much received, is, that man is made 
for the State, and not the State for man. Far otherwise is 
the truth. The State is an artificial body, intended for the 
security of the people. How constantly do we find, in human 
history, that the people have been sacrificed for the State ; 
to build the Roman name, to secure to England the trident 
of the sea. This is to sacrifice the greater for the less ; for 
the fleeting possessions of earth to barter the immortal soul. 
Let it be remembered that the State is not worth preserving 
at the cost of the lives and happiness of the people. 

It is not that I love country less, but Humanity more, that 
now, on this National Anniversary, I plead the cause of a 
higher and truer patriotism. Remember that you are men, 
by a more sacred bond than you are citizens ; that you are 
children of a common Father more than you are Americans. 

* " When any natural propensity is consecrated into a virtue, the greatest evils 
ensue. Patriotism is an instance of this. We are naturally led to give undue 
importance to ourselves ; this when the individual is clearly the object of his 
own feeling, is called selfishness. But when under the name of patriotism, each 
individual indulges himself in vanity, in pride, in ambition, in cruelty, and yet 
does it as an Englishman, a Frenchman, as a Spaniard [he might have added as 
an American], all these vices are reckoned virtues." — Life of Blanco White, 
Vol. II. p. 6. 



44 

Viewing, then, the different people on the globe, as all 
deriving their blood from a common source, and separated 
only by the accident of mountains, rivers and seas, into those 
distinctions around which cluster the associations of country, 
we must regard all the children of the earth as members of 
the great human family. Discord in this family is treason to 
God ; while all war is nothing else than civil war. It will 
b§ in vain that we restrain this odious term, importing so 
much of honor, to the petty dissensions of a single State. It 
belongs as justly to the feuds between nations. The soul 
stands aghast, as we contemplate fields drenched in fraternal 
gore, where the happiness of homes has been shivered by the 
unfriendly arms of neighbors, and where kinsmen have sunk 
beneath the cold steel that was nerved by a kinsman's hand. 
This is civij war, which stands for ever accursed in the calen- 
dar of time. But the Muse of History, in the faithful record 
of the future transactions of nations, inspired by a new and 
loftier justice, and touched to finer sensibilities, shall extend 
to the general sorrows of Universal Man the sympathy which 
has been profusely shed for the selfish sorrow of country, 
and shall pronounce all war to be civil war, and the partakers 
in it as traitors to God and enemies to man, 

6. I might here pause, feeling that those of my hearers 
who have kindly accompanied me to this stage, would be 
ready to join the condemnation of war, and hail peace, as 
the only condition becoming the dignity of human nature, 
and in which true greatness can be achieved. But there is 
still one more consideration, which yields to none of the 
others in importance ; perhaps it is more important than all. 
It is at once cause and effect ; the cause of much of the feel- 
ing in favor of war, and the effect of this feeling. I refer to 
the costly preparations of war, in time of peace. 

I do not propose to dwell upon the immense cost of war 
itself. That will be present to the mindsof all, in the moun- 
tainous accumulations of debt, piled like Ossa upon Pelion, 
with which Europe is pressed to the earth. According to 
the most recent tables to which I have had access, the public 
debt of the different European States, so far as it is known, 
amounts to the terrific sum of ^6,387,000,000, all of this 
the growth of War ! It is said that there are throughout 
these states, 17,900,000 paupers, or persons subsisting at 
the expense of the country, without contributing to its re- 
sources. If these millions of the public debt, forming only 



45 

a part of what has been wasted in war, could be apportioned 
among these poor, it would give to each of them ^375, a 
sum which would place all above want, and which is about 
equal to the average value of the property of each inhabi- 
tant of Massachusetts. 

The public debt of Great Britain amounted in 1839 to 
f 4,265,000,000, all of this the growth of War since 1688 ! 
This amount is about equal to the sum total, according to the 
calculations of Humboldt, of all the treasures which have 
been reaped from the harvest of gold and silver in the mines 
of Spanish America, including Mexico and Peru, since the 
first discovery of our hemisphere by Christopher Columbus ! 
It is much larger than the amount of all the precious metals, 
which at this moment form the circulating medium of the 
world ! It is said rashly by some persons, who have given 
little attention to this subject, that all this expenditure was 
good for the people ; but these persons do not bear in mind 
that it was not bestowed on any useful object. It was wasted. 
The aggregate capital of all the joint stock companies in 
England, of which there was any known record in 1842, 
embracing canals, docks, bridges, insurance companies, banks, 
gas-lights, water, mines, railways, and other miscellaneous 
objects, was about ^835,000,000; a sum which has been 
devoted to the welfare of the people, but how much less 
■in amount than the War Debt ! For the six years ending in 
1836, the average payment for the interest on this debt was 
about ,^140,000,000 annually. If we add to this sum, 
^60,000,000 during this same period paid annually to the 
army, navy and ordnance, we shall have $200,000,000 as 
the annual tax of the English people, to pay for former wars 
and to prepare for new. During this same period there was 
an annual appropriation of only $20,000,000 for all the 
civil purposes of the Government. It thus appears that War 
absorbed ninety cents of every dollar that was pressed by 
heavy taxation from the English people, who almost seem to 
sweat blood ! What fabulous monster, or chimera dire, 
ever raged with a maw so ravenous ! The remaining ten 
cents sufficed to maintain the splendor of the throne, the ad- 
ministration of justice, and the diplomatic relations with foreign 
powers, in short all the proper objects of a Christian State.* 

* 1 have here relied upon McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary ; The Edin- 
burgh Geography, founded on the works of Malte Brun and Balbi ; and the 
calculations of Mr. Jay in Peace and War, p. 16, and in his Address before the 
Peace Society, pp. 28, 29. 



46 

Let us now look exclusively at the preparations for war in 
time of peace. It is one of the miseries of war that, even 
in peace, its evils continue to be felt by the world, beyond 
any other evils by which poor suffering humanity is op- 
pressed. If Bellona withdraws from the field, we only 
lose the sight of her flaming torches ; the bay of her dogs is 
heard on the mountains, and civilized man thinks to find pro- 
tection from their sudden fury, only by enclosing himself in 
the defences of war. At this moment the Christian nations, 
worshipping a symbol of common brotherhood, live as in 
entrenched camps, in which they keep armed watch, to pre- 
vent surprise from each other. 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at any exact esti- 
mate of the cost of these preparations, ranging under four 
different heads ; the standing army ; the navy ; the fortifica- 
tions and ordnance ; and the militia or irregular troops. 

The number of soldiers now keeping the peace of Euro-^ 
pean Christendom, as a standing army, without counting the 
Navy, is upwards of two millions. Some estimates place it 
as high as three millions.* The army of Great Britain ex- 
ceeds 300,000 men ; that of France 350,000 ; that of Rus- 
sia 730,000, and is reckoned by some as high as 1,000,000 ; 
that of Austria about 275,000 ; that of Prussia 150,000. 
Taking the smaller number, suppose these two millions to 
require for their annual support an average sum of only ^150 
each, the result would be ^'300,000,000, for their sustenance 
alone ; and reckoning one officer to ten soldiers, and allowing 
to each of the latter an English shilling a day, or i^87 a 
year, for wages, and to the former an average salary of 
^500 a year, we should have for the pay of the whole no 
less than ^256,000,000, or an appalling sum total for both 
sustenance and pay of ^'556,000,000. If the same calcu- 
lation be made, supposing the forces to amount to three mil- 
lions, the sum total will be f 835,000,000 ! But to this 
enormous sum another still more enormous must be added on 
account of the loss sustained by the withdrawal of two mil- 
lions of hardy, healthy men, in the bloom of life, from useful, 
productive labor. It has been supposed that it costs an 

* I have here relied upon the Edinburgh Geography, founded on the works of 
Malte Brun and Baibi, which makes the standing army of the European Powers 
upwards of two millions. The tract on the Waste of Property by War, which 
illustrates this subject by many important statistics, makes it upward of three 
millions. The annual expense of supporting a soldier differs in different countries. 
In Austria it is about ^130; in France ^146; in Prussia nearly ^200, and in 
England still greater. 



47 

average of ,^500 to rear a soldier ; and that the value of his 
labor if devoted to useful objects would be $150 a year. 
The Christian Powers, therefore, in setting apart two mil- 
lions of men, as soldiers, sustain a loss of $1,000,000,000 
on account of their training ; and $300,000,000 annually, 
on account of their labor. So much for the cost of 
the standing army of European Christendom in time of 
Peace. 

Glance now at the Navy of European Christendom. The 
Royal Navy of Great Britain consists at present of 556 
ships of all classes ; but deducting such as are used as con- 
vict ships, floating chapels, coal depots, the efficient navy 
consists of 88 sail of the line; 109 frigates; 190 small 
frigates, corvettes, brigs and cutters, including packets ; 65 
steamers of various sizes ; 3 troop-ships and yachts ; in all 
455 ships. Of these there were in commission in July, 
1839, 190 ships, carrying in all 4,202 guns. The number 
of hands employed in 1839, was 34,465. The Navy of 
France, though not comparable in size with that of England, 
is of vast force. By royal ordinance of 1st January, 1837, 
it was fixed in time of peace at 40 ships of the line, 50 
frigates, 40 steamers, and 190 smaller vessels ; and the 
amount of crews in 1839, was 20,317 men. The Russian 
Navy consists of two large fleets in the Gulf of Finland and 
the Black Sea ; but the exact amount of their force and their 
available resourc^ks has been a subject of dispute amongst 
naval men and politicians. Some idea may be formed of the 
size of the navy from the number of hands employed. The 
crews of the Baltic fleet amounted in 1837, to not less than 
30,800 men ; and those of the fleet in the Black Sea to 
19,800, or altogether 50,600. The Austrian Navy con- 
sisted in 1837, of 8 ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 sloops, 6 
brigs, 7 schooners or galleys, and a number of smaller ves- 
sels ; the number of men in its service in 1839, was 4,547. 
The Navy of Denmark consisted at the close of 1837 of 7 
ships of the line, 7 frigates, 5 sloops, 6 brigs, 3 schooners, 5 
cutters, 58 gun-boats, 6 gun-rafts, and 3 bomb vessels, re- 
quiring about 6,500 men to man them. The Navy of Swe- 
den and Norway consisted recently of 238 gun-boats, 11 
ships of the line, 8 frigates, 4 corvettes, 6 brigs, with several 
smaller vessels. The Navy of Greece consists of 32 ships 
of war, carrying 190 guns, and 2,400 men. The Navy of 
Holland in 1839 consisted of 8 ships of the line, 21 frigates, 



48 

15 corvettes, 21 brigs, and 95 gun-boats.* It is impossible 
to give any accurate idea of the immense cost of all these 
mighty preparations for war. It is melancholy to contem- 
plate such gigantic means, applied by European Christendom 
to the erection of these superfluous wooden walls in time of 
Peace ! 

In the fortifications and arsenals of Europe, crowning 
every height, commanding every valley, and frowning over 
every plain and every sea, wealth has been sunk which is 
beyond calculation. Who can tell the immense sums that 
have been expended in hollowing out, for the purposes of 
defence, the living rock of Gibraltar? Who can calculate 
the cost of all the preparations at Woolwich, its 27,000 
cannons, and its hundreds of thousands of small arms ? 
France alone contains upwards of one hundred and twenty 
fortified places. And it is supposed that the yet unfinished 
fortifications of Paris have cost upwards of fifty millions of 
dollars ! 

The cost of the militia or irregular troops, the Yeomanry 
of England, the National Guards of Paris, and the Landwehr 
and Landsturm of Prussia, must add other incalculable sums 
to these enormous amounts. 

Turn now to the United States, separated by a broad 
ocean from immediate contact with the great powers of 
Christendom, bound by treaties of amity and commerce with 
all the nations of the earth ; connected with all by the 
strong ties of mutual interest ; and professing a devotion to 
the principles of Peace. Are the Treaties of Amity mere 
words ? Are the relations of commerce and mutual interest 
mere things of a day ? Are the professions of Peace vain ? 
Else why not repose in quiet, unvexed by preparations of war ? 

Enormous as are the expenses of this character in Europe, 
those in our country are still greater in proportion to the 
other expenditures of the Federal Government. 

It appears that the average expenditures of the Federal 
Government for the six years ending with 1840, exclusive of 
payments on account of debt, were ^'26,474,892; of this 
sum, the average appropriation each year for military and 
naval purposes amounted to ^21,328,903, being eighty per 
cent, of the whole amount ! Yes ; of all the income which 
was received by the Federal Government, eighty cents in 
every dollar was applied in this useless way. The remaining 

* I have drawn these details from the Edinburgh Geography ; and from McCul- 
loch'3 Dictionary of Geography. 



49 

twenty cents sufficed to maintain the Government, the admin- 
istration of justice, our relations with foreign nations, the 
light-houses which shed their cheerful signals over the rough 
waves which beat upon our long and indented coast, from the 
Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the Mississippi. Let us ob- 
serve the relative expenditures of the United States, in the 
scale of the nations, for military preparations, in time of 
Peace, exclusive of payments on account of the debts. 
These expenditures are in proportion to the whole expendi- 
ture of Government : 

In Austria, as 33 per cent.. 

In France, as 38 per cent.. 

In Prussia, as 44 per cent.. 

In Great Britain as 74 per cent.. 

In the United States, as 80 per cent !* 
To these superfluous expenditures of the Federal Govern- 
ment, are to be added the still larger and equally superfluous 
expenses of the militia throughout the country, which have 
been placed at ^50,000,000 a year ! f 

By a table f of the expenditures of the United States, ex-r 
elusive of payments on account of the Public Debt, it 
appears, that, in the fifty-three years from the formation of our 
present Government, in 1789 down to 1843, there have been 
,^246,6!20,055 spent for civil purposes, comprehending the ex- 
penses of the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, the post 
office, light-houses, and intercourse with foreign governments. 
During this same period there have been ^368,526,594 
devoted to the military establishment, and ,$'170,437,684 
to the naval establishment ; the two, forming an aggregate 
of ^538,964,278. Deducting from this sum the appropria- 
tions during three years of war, and we shall find that more 
than four hundred millions were absorbed by vain prepara- 
tions in time of peace for war. Add to this amount a mod- 
erate sum for the expenses of the militia during the same 
period, which a candid and able writer places at present at 
^50,000,000 a year; for the past years we may take an 
average of ^25,000,000, and we shall have the enormous 
sum of f 1,335,000,000 to be added to the ^400,000,000 ; 
the whole amounting to seventeen hundred and thirty-jive 

* I have verified these results by the tables of expenditures of these different 
nations, but 1 do little more than follow Mr. Jay, who has illustrated this impor- 
tant point with his accustomed accuracy. Address, p. 30. 

t Jay's Peace and War, p. 13. t American Almanac for 1845, page 143. 

7 



50 

millions of dollars, a sum beyond the conception of human 
facuhies, sunk under the sanction of the Government of the 
United States in mere peaceful preparations for war ; more 
than seve7i times as much as was dedicated by the Govern- 
ment d^inng the same period, to all other purposes whatsoever. 

From this serried array of figures the mind instinctively 
retreats. If we examine them from a nearer point of view, 
and, selecting some particular part, compare it with the fig- 
ures representing other interests in the community, they will 
present a front still more dread. 

Within a short distance of this city stands an institution of 
learning, which was one of the earliest cares of the early 
forefathers of the country, the conscientious Puritans. Fa- 
vored child of an age of trial and struggle, carefully nursed 
through a period of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that 
time by the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from 
its first foundation by the paternal arm of the Commonwealth, 
by a constant succession of munificent bequests, and by the 
prayers of all good men, the University at Cambridge now 
invites our homage as the most ancient, the most interesting, 
and the most important seat of learning in the land ; possess- 
ing the oldest and most valuable library, one of the largest 
museums of mineralogy and natural history, — a School of 
Law, which annually receives into its bosom more than one 
hundred and fifty sons from all parts of the Union, where 
they listen to instruction from professors whose names have 
become among the most valuable possessions of the land* — 
a School of Divinity, the nurse of true learning and piety — 
one of the largest and most flourishing Schools of Medicine 
in the country — besides these, a general body of teachers, 
twenty-seven in number, many of whose names help to keep 
the name of the country respectable in every part of the 
globe, where science, learning and taste are cherished — the 
whole, presided over at this moment by a gentleman, early 
distinguished in public life by his unconquerable energies and 
his masculine eloquence, at a later period, by the unsur- 
passed ability with which he administered the affairs of our 
city, now in a green old age, full of years and honors, pre- 
paring to lay down his present high trust.f Such is Harvard 

* Mr. Justice Story, whose various judicial writings have caused him to be 
hailed, in foreign lands, among the first jurists of the age; and Professor Green- 
leaf, whose classic work on the Law of Evidence, has already become an author- 
ity on both sides of the Atlantic, 

t Hon. Josiah Quincy. 



51 

University ; and as one of the humblest of her children, 
happy in the recollection of a youth nurtured in her classic 
retreats, I cannot allude to her without an expression of filial 
affection and respect. 

It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer,* that 
the whole available property of the University, the various 
accumulations of more than two centuries of generosity, 
amounts to .^703,175. 

There now swings idly at her moorings, in this harbor, a 
ship of the line, the Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as 
late as 1836 for $547,888; repaired only two years after- 
wards in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament which has 
cost $53,945 ; making an amount of $834,845,f as the ac- 
tual cost at this moment of that single ship ; more than 
$100,000 beyond all the available accumulations of the 
richest and most ancient seat of learnmg in the land ! Choose 
ye, my fellow citizens of a Christian state, between the two 
caskets — that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and 
truth, or that which contains the carrion death. 

Let us pursue the comparison still further. The account 
of the expenditures of the University during the last year, 
for the general purposes of the College, the instruction of 
the Undergraduates, and for the Schools of Law and Divin- 
ity, amounts to $46,949. The cost of the Ohio for one 
year in service, in salaries, wages and provisions, is $220,000 ; 
being $175,000 more than the annual expenditures of 
the University ; more than four times as much. In other 
words, for the annual sum which is lavished on one ship of 
the line, four Institutions, like Harvard University, might be 
sustained throughout the country ! 

Still further let us pursue the comparison. The pay of 
the Captain of a ship like the Ohio, is $4,500, when in ser- 
vice ; $3,500, when on leave of absence, or off duty. The 
salary of the President of the Harvard University is $2,205 ; 
without leave of absence, and never being off duty ! 

If the large endowments of Harvard University are dwarfed 
by a comparison with the expense of a single ship of the 
line, how much more must it be so with those of other insti- 
tutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the 

* Hon. S. A. Eliot's Report in 1844. 

t Document No. 132, House of Representatives, 3d session, 27th Congress. 
Reference is here made to the Ohio, because she happens to be in our waters. 
The expense of the Delaware in 1842 had been ;gl,051,000. 



52 

bounty of many generations. The average cost of a sloop 
of war is ^315,000; more probably, than all the endow- 
ments of those twin stars of learning in the Western part of 
Massachusetts, the Colleges at Williamstown and Amherst, 
and of that single star in the East, the guide to many ingen- 
uous youth, the Seminary at Andover. The yearly cost of 
a sloop of war in service is above ^50,000 ; more than the 
annual expenditures of these three Institutions combined. 

I might press the comparison with other Institutions of be- 
neficence, with the annual expenditures for the Blind — that 
noble and successful charity, which has shed true lustre upon 
our Commonwealth — amounting to ^12,000 ; and the annual 
expenditures for the Insane of the Commonwealth, another 
charity dear to humanity, amounting to ^27,844. 

Take all the Institutions of learning and beneficence, the 
precious jewels of the Commonwealth, the schools, colleges, 
hospitals and asylums, and the sums by which they have been 
purchased and preserved are trivial and beggarly, compared 
with the treasures squandered within the borders of Massa- 
chusetts in vain preparations for war. There is the Navy 
Yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, all costing 
^4,741,000 ; the fortifications in the harbors of Massachu- 
setts, in which have been sunk already incalculable sums, 
and in which it is now proposed to sink ^3,853,000 more ;* 
and besides, the Arsenal at Springfield, containing in 1842, 
175,118 muskets, valued at |;2,999,998,t and which is fed 
by an annual appropriation of about ^200,000; but whose 
highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of 
truth, that it inspired a poem, which in its influence shall be 
mightier than a battle, and shall endure when arsenals and 
fortifications have crumbled to the earth.J 

Look for one moment at a high and peculiar interest of 

* Document; Report of Secretary of War; No. 2. Senate, 27th Congress, 
2d session ; where it is proposed to invest in a system of land defences 
,951,677,929. 

t Exec. Documents of 1842—43, Vol. 1. No. 3. 

i From Mr. Longfellow's " Arsenal at Springfield" I extract two stanzas, which, 
in poetical expression, are the least attractive of any in the poem, but which 
commend themselves by their intrinsic truth and moral force : 

We e half ihs power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth, bestowed on camp and courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error. 
There were no need of arsenals and forts. 

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 

And every nation that should lift again 
Its hand against its brother, on its forehead 

Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! 



53 

the nation, the administration of justice. Perhaps no part 
of our system is regarded with more pride and confidence by 
the enhghtened sense of the country. To this, indeed, all the 
other concerns of Government, all its complications of 
machinery, are in a manner subordinate, since it is for the 
sake of justice that men come together in states and estab- 
lish laws. What part of the Government can compare in 
importance, with the Federal Judiciary, that great balance 
wheel of the Constitution, controlling the relations of the 
States to each other, the legislation of Congress and of the 
States, besides private interests to an incalculable amount? 
Nor can the citizen, who discerns the true glory of his 
country, fail to recognize in the judicial labors of Marshall, 
now departed, and in the immortal judgments of Story, who 
is still spared to us, — serus in ccelum redeat — a higher claim 
to admiration and gratitude than can be found in any triumph 
of battle. The expenses of the administration of Justice, 
throughout the United States, under the Federal Government, 
in 1842, embracing the salaries of the judges, the cost of 
juries, court-houses and all officers thereof, in short all the 
outlay by which Justice, according to the requirements of 
Magna Charta, is carried to every man's door, amounted to 
^560,990, a larger sum than is usually appropriated for this 
purpose, but how insignificant compared with the demands of 
the army and navy ! 

Let me allude to one more curiosity of wdiSte. It appears, 
by a calculation founded on the expenses of the Navy, that 
the average cost of each gun, carried over the ocean, for 
one year, amounts to about fifteen thousand dollars ;* a sum 
sufficient to sustain ten professors of Colleges, and equal to 
the salaries of all the judges of the Supreme Court of 
Massachusetts and the Governor combined ! 

Such are a few brief illustrations of the tax which the 
nations of the world, and particularly our own country, 
impose on the people, in time of profound peace, for no pur- 
pose of good, but only in obedience to the spirit of war. As we 
wearily climb, in this survey, from expenditure to expenditure, 
from waste to waste, we seem to pass beyond the region of or- 
dinary calculation ; Alps on Alps arise, on whose crowning 
heights of everlasting ice, far above the habitations of man, 
where no green thing lives, where no creature draws its breath, 
we behold the cold, sharp, flashing glacier of War. 

* Mr. Coues' tract, What is the use of the Navy of the United States? 



54 

In the contemplation of this spectacle the soul swells with 
alternate despair and hope ; with despair, at the thought of 
such wealth, capable of rendering such service to humanity, 
not merely wasted but given to perpetuate hate ; with hope, 
as the blessed vision arises of the devotion of all these incal- 
culable means to the purposes of peace. The whole world 
labors at this moment with poverty and distress ; and the 
painful question occurs to every observer, in Europe as well 
as at home, — what shall become of the poor, — the increasing 
standing army of the poor. Could the humble voice that 
now addresses you, penetrate those distant counsels, or coun- 
sels nearer home, it would say, disband your standing armies 
of soldiers ; abandon your fortifications and arsenals, or dedi- 
cate them to works of beneficence, as the statue of Jupiter 
Capitolinus was changed to the image of a Christian saint ; 
apply your navy to purposes of commerce ; in fine, utterly 
forsake the present incongruous system of armed peace ! 

That I may not seem to press to this conclusion with too 
much haste, at least as regards our own country, I shall con- 
sider briefly, as becomes the occasion, the asserted usefulness 
of the national defences which it is proposed to abandon. 

What is the use of the Standing Army of the United 
States 7 It has been a principle of freedom, during maify 
generations, to avoid a standing army ; and one of the com- 
plaints in the Declaration of Independence was that George 
III had quartered large bodies of troops in the colonies. For 
the first few years, after the adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution, during our weakness, before our power was assured, 
before our name had become respected in the family of 
nations, under the administration of Washington, a small 
sum was deemed ample for the military establishment of the 
United States. It was only when the country, at a later day, 
had been touched by the insanity of war, that it surrendered 
to military prejudices, and, abandoning the true economy of 
a Republic, cultivated a military spirit, and lavished the 
means, which it begrudged to the purposes of Peace, in vain 
preparation for War. It may now be said of the army of 
the United States, as Dunning said of the prerogatives of 
the crown, it has increased, is increasing, and ought to be 
diminished. At this moment there are more than fifty-five 
military posts in the country. Of what use is the detach- 
ment of the second regiment of Artillery in the quiet town 
of New London in Connecticut ? Of what use is the de- 



55 

tachment of the first regiment of Artillery in that pleasant 
resort of fashion, Newport? No person who has not lost 
all sensibility to the dignity of human nature, can observe, 
without- mortification, the discipline, the drilling, the marchino- 
and countermarching, the putting guns to the shoulder and 
then dropping them to the earth, which fill the lives of the 
poor soldiers, and prepare them to become the mere inani- 
mate parts of a mere machine, to which the great living 
master of the art of war has likened an army. And this 
sensibility must be much more offended when he beholds a 
number of the ingenuous youth of the country, under the 
auspices of the Government, amidst the bewitching scenery 
of West Point, trained to these same farcical and humiliating 
exercises.* It is time that the people should declare the 
army to be an utterly useless branch of the public service ; 
but not merely useless, also a seminary of idleness and vice, 
breeding manners uncongenial with our institutions, shortening 
the lives of those whom it enlists, and maintained at an ex- 
pense, as we have already seen, which far surpasses all that 
is bestowed on all the civil purposes of the Government. 

But I hear the voice of some defender of this abuse, some 
upholder of this "rotten borough" of our Constitution, 
crying, the army is needed for the defence of the country ! 
As well might you say, that the shadow is needed for the 
defence of the body ; for what is the army of the United 
States but the feeble shadow of the power of the American 
people ! In placing the army on its present footing, so small 
in numbers compared with the forces of the great European 
States, our Government has tacitly admitted its superfluous- 
ness as a means of defence. Moreover, there is one plea for 
standing armies in Europe which cannot prevail here. They 
are supposed to be needed by Governments which do not 
proceed from the popular voice, to sustain their power. The 
monarchs of the Old World, like the chiefs of the ancient 
German tribes, are upborne by the shields of the soldiery. 
Happily with us the Government springs from the hearts of 
the people, and needs no janizaries for its support. It only 
remains to declare distinctly that the country will repose, in 
the consciousness of right, without the wasteful excess of 
supporting soldiers, lazy consumers of the fruits of the earth, 

* The amount appropriated by Congress for the Institution of West Point, 
since its establishment, is ^4,002,901 15. 



56 

who might do the State good service in the various depart- 
ments of useful industry. 

Jiliat is the use of the Navy of the United States ? The 
annual expense of our Navy for several years past has been 
upwards of six millions of dollars. For what purpose is 
this paid ? Not for the apprehension of pirates ; for frigates 
and ships of the line are of too great bulk to be of service 
for this purpose. Not for the suppression of the Slave 
Trade ; for under the stipulations with Great Britain, we 
employ only eighty guns in this holy alliance. Not to pro- 
tect our coasts ; for all agree that our few ships would form 
an unavailing defence against any serious attack. Not for 
these purposes we will admit ; hit for the protection of our 
Navigation. This is not the occasion for minute calcula- 
tions. Suffice it to say, that an intelligent merchant, who 
has been extensively engaged in commerce for the last twenty 
years, and who speaks, therefore, with the authority of 
knowledge, has demonstrated in a tract of perfect clearness, 
that the annual amount of the freights of the whole mercan- 
tile marine of the country does not equal the annual expen- 
diture of the Navy of the United States.* Protection at 
such cost is more ruinous than one of Pyrrhus' victories ! 

In objecting to the Navy, I wish to limit myself to the 
Navy as an asserted arm of national defence. So far as it 
may be necessary, as a part of the police of the seas, to 
purge them of pirates, and above all, to defeat the hateful 
traffic in human flesh, it is a proper arm of government. 
The free cities of Hamburgh and Bremen, survivors of the 
great Hanseatic League, with a commerce that whitens the 
most distant seas, are without a single ship of war. Let the 
United States be willing to follow their wise example, and 
abandon an institution which has already become a vain and 
most expensive toy ! 

What is the use of the fortif cations of the United States 1 
We have already seen the enormous sums which have been 
locked in the dead hands, in the odious mortmain, of their 
everlasting masonry. This is in the hope of saving the 
country thereby from the horrors of conquest and bloodshed. 
And here let me meet this suggestion with frankness and 

* I refer to Mr. Coues' tract, " What is the use of the Navy of the United 
States ? " which has already produced a strong effect on many minds, the natural 
consequence of its unanswerable arguments and statements. JSo person should 
undertake to vindicate the Navy, or sanction appropriations for its support, with- 
out answering this tract. 



57 

distinctness. I will not repeat what has been set forth in an 
earlier part of my remarks, the considerations showing that 
in our age, no war of strict self-defence can possibly arise, 
no war which can be supported by the consciences of those 
even who disclaim the highest standard of the gospel ; but 
I will suppose the case of a war, unjust and unchristian it 
must be, between our country and one of the great powers 
of Europe. In such a war, what would be the effect of the 
fortifications ? Clearly to invite the attack, which they 
would in all probability be inadequate to defeat. It is a rule 
now recognized even in the barbarous code of war, one 
branch of which has been illustrated with admirable ability 
in the diplomatic correspondence of Mr. Webster, that non- 
combatants shall not in any way be molested, and that the 
property of private persons shall in all cases be held sacred. 
So firmly did the Duke of Wellington act upon this rule, that 
throughout the murderous campaigns of Spain and afterwards 
when he entered France, flushed with the victory of Water- 
loo, he directed that his army should pay for all provisions, 
and even for the forage of their'horses. The war is carried on 
against public property, — against fortifications, navy yards 
and arsenals. But if these do not exist, there can be no 
aliment, no fuel for the flame. Every new fortification and 
every additional gun in our harbor is, therefore, not a safe- 
guard, but a source of danger to our city. Better throw them 
in the sea, than madly allow them to draw to our homes the 
lightning of battle, without, alas, any conductor to hurry its 
terrors innocently beneath the concealing bosom of the earth ! 
What is the use of the militia of the United States ? 
This immense system spreads, with more than a hundred 
arms, over the whole country, sucking its best life-blood, the 
unbought energies of the youth. The same farcical discipline, 
shouldering arms and carrying arms, which we have observed 
in the soldier, absorbs their time, though, of course, to a 
much less degree than in the regular army. We read with 
astonishment of the painted flesh, and uncouth vestments of 
our progenitors, the ancient Britons. The generation will 
soon come that will regard with equal wonder the pictures of 
their ancestors, closely dressed in padded and well-buttoned 
coats of blue, " besmeared with gold," surmounted by a huge 
mountain-cap of shaggy bear-skin, and with a barbarous 
device, typical of brute force, a tiger, painted on oil-skin, 
tied with leather to their backs ! In the streets of Pisa, the 



58 

o-alley-slaves are compelled to wear dresses stamped with the 
name of the crime for which they are suffering punishment ; 
as theft, robbery, murder. It is not a little strange, that 
Christians, living in a land " where bells have tolled to 
church," should voluntarily adopt devices, which, if they have 
any meaning, recognize the example of beasts as worthy of 
imitation by man.* The general considerations which belong 
to the subject of preparations for war will illustrate the inanity 
of the militia for the purposes of national defence. I do not 
know, indeed, that it is now strongly advocated on this 
ground. It is most often spoken of as an important part of 
the police of the country. I would not undervalue the 
blessings to be derived from an active, efficient, ever-wakeful 
police ; and I believe that such a police has been long 
required in our country. But the militia, composed of youth 
of undoubted character, though of untried courage, is clearly 
inadequate for this purpose. No person, who has seen them 
in an actual riot, can hesitate in this judgment.! A very 

* It is a curious illustratiou of the low standard of conduct to which men and 
nations have appealed, that they have chosen emblems and armorial bearinss from 
beasts and birds of prey. The lion is rampant on the flag of England ; the leopard 
on that of Scotland ; a double-headed eagle spreads its wings on the imperial 
standard of Austria. After exhausting the known kingdom of nature, the pennons 
of knights, like the knapsacks of our militia, were disfigured by imaginary and 
impossible monsters, griffins, hippogriffs, unicorns, all intended to represent the 
excess of brute force. Froissart records as a miracle, that a dove once rested in 
its flight on the royal banner of France. The people of Massachusetts have 
unconsciously adopted the same degrading standard. In the escutcheon which 
is used as the seal of the State, there is a most unfortunate combination of dis- 
agreeable and unworthy suggestions. On that part which, in the language of 
heraldry, is termed the shield, is placed an Indian, with a bow in his hand ; cer- 
tainly no agreeable memento, except to those who find honor in the disgraceful 
wars in which our fathers robbed and murdered King Philip, of Fokanoket, and 
his tribe, the rightful possessors of the soil. The crest is a raised arm, holding, 
in a threatening attitude, a drawn sabre ; being precisely the emblem which is 
borne on the flag of Algiers! The scroll, or legend, consists of the last of those 
two lines, in bad Latin, from an unknown source, which we first encounter, as 
they were inscribed by Algernon Sydney, in the Album at the University of 
Copenhagen, in Denmark: 

Manus hcEC inimica tyrannis, 
Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem. 
The Legislature of Massachusetts has adopted, with singular unanimity, resolu- 
tions expressing its earnest desire for the establishment of a General Convention, 
or Congress of Nations, to adjudge questions between nations, and thus supersede 
the imagined necessity of war. Would it not be an act of moral dignity, becoming 
the character which it vaunts before the world, to adopt a new seal; at least to 
erase that Algerine emblem, fit only for Corsairs, and those words of barbarous 
Latin, which can awaken only the idea of ignorance and brute force. If a Latin 
motto he needed, it might be those words of Virgil, " Padsque imponere mo- 
rem;" or that sentence of noble truth from Cicero, " Sine summa justitia 
rempublicam geri nullo modo posse." De Republ. Lib. II. Cap. 44. 

t The riot in Broad Street, m 1837, is often invoked by the devotees of the 
militia (for it has devotees !) as an instance of the important aid derived from 
this arm of the police. It will not be denied, however, that an apparatus much 
less costly would have sufficed for the purpose. I hope 1 shall be pardoned if I 
venture to correct a misapprehension which has extensively prevailed with regard 



59 

small portion of the means which are absorbed by the militia, 
would provide a police that should be competent to all the 
emergences of domestic disorder and violence. 

The City of Boston has long been convinced of the inex- 
pediency of a Fire Department composed of mere volunteers. 
It is to be hoped that a similar conviction may pervade the 
country with regard to the police. I am well aware, however, 
that efforts to abolish the militia system will be encountered 
by some of the dearest prejudices of the common mind ; not 
only by the war spirit ; but by that other spirit, which first 
animates childhood, and at a later day, " children of a larger 
growth," inviting to finery of dress and parade, — the same 
spirit which fantastically bedecks the dusky feather-cinctured 
chiefs of the soft regions warmed by the tropical sun ; which 
inserts rings in the noses of the North American Indians ; 
which slits the ears of the Australian savages ; and tattoes 
the New Zealand cannibals. 

Such is a review of the true character and value of the 
national defences of the United States ! It will be observed 
that I have thus far regarded them in the plainest light of 
ordinary worldly economy, without reference to those higher 
considerations, founded on the history and nature of man, and 
the truths of Christianity which pronounce them to be vain. 
It is grateful to know, that though they may yet have the 
support of what Jeremy Taylor calls the " popular noises," 
still the more economical, more humane, more wise, more 
Christian system is daily commending itself to wide circles 
of the good people of the land. All the virtues that truly 
elevate a state are on its side. Economy, sick of the pigmy 
efforts to staunch the smallest fountains and rills of exuberant 
expenditure, pleads that here is an endless, boundless river, 
an Amazon of waste, rolling its turbid, unhealthy waters 
vainly to the sea. It chides us with an unnatural inconsis- 
tency when we strain at a little twine and red tape, and 
swallow the monstrous cables and armaments of war. Hu- 
manity pleads for the poor from whom such mighty means 
are withdrawn. Wisdom frowns on these preparations as 
calculated to nurse sentiments inconsistent with Peace. 

to the services of the militia on that occasion. 1 had been on the ground, and in 
the very houses the scene of the riot, for an hour previous to the appearance of 
the militia, and am able to state distinctly, that before this arm of the police was 
discerned in the street moving along " by blore of trump, and thump of drum," 
the riot had ceased. A small number of intelligent, fearless and unarmed men 
could have quelled it at a much earlier moment. 



60 

Christianity calmly rebukes the spirit in which they have 
their origin, as being of little faith, and treacherous to her 
high behests ; while History shows the sure progress of man, 
like the lion in Paradise still " pawing to get free his hinder 
parts," but certain, if he be true to his nature, to emancipate 
himself from the restraints of earth. 

The sentiment, that in time of peace we must prepare for 
war, has been transmitted from distant ages when brute force 
prevailed. It is the terrible inheritance, the damnosa hcere- 
ditas, which painfully reminds the people of our day of their 
relations with the Past. It belongs to the rejected dogmas 
of barbarism. It is the companion of those harsh rules of 
tyranny by which the happiness of the many has been offered 
up to the propensities of the few. It is the child of suspi- 
cion and the forerunner of violence. Having in its favor the 
almost uninterrupted usage of the world, it possesses a hold 
on the common mind, which is not easily unloosed. And 
yet the conscientious soul cannot fail, on careful observation, 
to detect its most mischievous fallacy — a fallacy the most 
costly the world has witnessed, and which dooms nations to 
annual tributes in comparison with which all that have been 
extorted by conquests are as the widow's mite by the side of 
Pharisaical contributions. So true is what Rousseau said, 
and Guizot has since repeated, " that a bad principle is far 
worse than a bad fact ; " for the operations of the one are 
finite, while those of the other are infinite. 

I speak of this principle with earnestness : for I believe it 
to be erroneous and false, founded in ignorance and barbarism, 
unworthy of an age of light, and disgraceful to Christians. 
I have called it a principle ; but it is a mere prejudice — sus- 
tained by human example only, and not by lofty truth — in 
obeying which we imitate the early mariners, who steered 
from headland to headland and hugged the shore, unwilling 
to venture upon the broad ocean, where their guide should 
be the luminaries of Heaven. 

Dismissing from our minds, the actual usage of nations on 
the one side, and the considerations of economy on the 
other, and regarding preparations for war in time of peace 
in the clear light of reason, in a just appreciation of the 
nature of man, and in the injunctions of the highest truth, 
they cannot fail to be branded as most pernicious. They 
are pernicious on two grounds ; Jirst, because they inflame 
the people, who make them, exciting them to deeds of vio- 



61 

lence which otherwise would be most aHen to their minds ; 
and second, because having their origin in the low motive of 
distrust and hate, they inevitably, by a sure law of the hu- 
man mind, excite a corresponding feeling in other nations. 
Thus they are in fact not the preservers of peace, but the 
provokers of war. 

In illustration of the ^rsf of these grounds, it will occur to 
every inquirer, that the possession of power is always in itself 
dangerous, that it tempts the purest and highest natures to 
self-indulgence, that it can rarely be enjoyed without abuse ; 
nor is the power to employ force in war, or otherwise, an 
exception to this law. History teaches that the nations , 
possessing the greatest military forces, have always been the 
most belligerent ; while the feebler powers have enjoyed, for 
a longer period, the blessings of Peace. The din of war 
resounds throughout more than seven hundred years of 
Roman history, with only two short lulls of repose ; while 
smaller states, less potent in arms, and without the excite- 
ment to quarrels on this account, have enjoyed long eras of 
Peace. It is not in the history of nations only, that we find 
proofs of this law. Like every great moral principle, it ap- 
plies equally to individuals. The experience of private life, 
in all ages, confirms it. The wearing of arms has always been 
a provocative to combat. It has excited the spirit and fur- 
nished the implements of strife. As we revert to the progress 
of society in modern Europe, we find that the odious system 
of private quarrels, of hostile meetings even in the street, 
continued so long as men persevered in the habit of wearing 
arms. Innumerable families were thinned by death received 
in these hasty and often unpremeditated encounters ; and the 
lives of scholars and poets were often exposed to their rude 
chances. Marlowe, " with all his rare learning and wit," per- 
ished ignominiously under the weapon of an unknown adver- 
sary ; and Savage, whose genius and misfortune inspired the 
friendship and the eulogies of Johnson, was tried for murder 
committed in a sudden broil. " The expert swordsman," 
says Mr. Jay,* " the practised marksman, is ever more ready 
to engage in personal combats, than the man who is unaccus- 
tomed to the use of deadly weapons. In those portions of 
our country where it is supposed essential to personal safety 
to go armed with pistols and bowie-knives, mortal affrays 
are so frequent as to excite but little attention, and to secure, 

* Address before the American Peace Society, pp. 23, 24. 



62 

with rare exceptions, impunity to the murderer ; whereas, at 
the North and East, where we are unprovided with such 
facilities for taking Hfe, comparatively few murders of the 
kind are perpetrated. We might, indeed, safely submit the 
decision of the principle we are discussing to the calculations 
of pecuniary interest. Let two men, equal in age and 
health, apply for an insurance on their lives ; one known to 
be ever armed to defend his honor and his life against every 
assailant ; and the other a meek, unresisting Quaker. Can 
we doubt for a moment which of these men would be 
deemed by the Insurance Company most likely to reach a 
good old age ? " 

The second of these grounds is a part of the unalterable 
nature of man, which was recognized in early ages, though 
unhappily it has been rarely made the basis of intercourse 
among nations. It is an expansion of the old Horatian adage, 
Si vis me Jlere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi ; if you wish 
me to weep, you must yourself first weep. So are we all 
knit together that the feelings in our own bosoms awaken cor- 
responding feelings in the bosoms of others ; as harp answers 
to harp in its softest vibrations ; as deep responds to deep in 
the might of its passions. What within us is good invites 
the good in our brother ; generosity begets generosity ; love 
wins love ; Peace secures Peace ; while all within us that is 
bad challenges the bad in our brother ; distrust engenders 
distrust ; hate provokes hate ; War arouses War. Life is 
full of illustrations of this beautiful law. Even the miserable 
maniac, in whose mind the common rules of conduct are 
overthrown, confesses its overruling power, and the vacant 
stare of madness may be illumined by a word of love. The 
wild beasts confess it ; and what is the interesting story of Or- 
pheus, whose music drew in listening rapture the lions and pan- 
thers of the forest, but an expression of this prevailing law ? * 

Literature abounds in illustrations of this principle. Look- 
ing back to the early dawn of the world, one of the most 
touching scenes which we behold, illumined by that Auroral 
light, is the peaceful visit of the aged Priam to the tent of 

* There is a striking illustration of this law in the incident recorded by Homer 
in the Odyssey (XIV. 30, 31), where Ulysses, on reaching his loved Ithaca, is 
beset by dogs, who are described as wild beasts in ferocity, and who barking 
rushed towards him; but he, with craft, (that is the word of Homer) seats him- 
self upon the earth, and lets his staff fall from his hands ; thus in unarmed repose 
finding protection. A similar incident is noticed by Mr. Mure in his entertaining 
travels in Greece ; and also by Mr. Borrow in his Bible in Spain. Pliny remarks 
that all dogs may be appeased m the same way. Impetus eorum, etsaevitia miti- 
gantur ab homine considente humi. Nat. Hist. Lib. VHI. cap. 40. 



63 

Achilles to entreat the body of his son. The fierce combat 
has ended in the death of Hector, whose unhonored corse 
the bloody Greek has already trailed behind his chariot. The 
venerable father, after twelve days of grief, is moved to 
efforts to regain the remains of the Hector he had so dearly 
loved. He leaves his lofty cedarn chamber, and with a 
single aged attendant, unarmed, repairs to the Grecian camp, 
by the side of the distant sounding sea. Entering alone, he 
finds Achilles within his tent ; in the company of two of his 
chiefs. He grasps his knees, and kisses those terrible homi- 
cidal hands, which had taken the life of his son. The heart 
of the inflexible, the angry, the inflamed Achilles is touched 
by the sight which he beholds, and responds to the feelings 
of Priam. He takes the suppliant by the hand, seats him 
by his side, consoles his grief, refreshes his weary body, and 
concedes to the prayers of a weak, unarmed old man, what 
all Troy in arms could not win.* In this scene the poet, 
with unconscious power, has presented a picture of the om- 
nipotence of that law of our nature, making all mankind of 
kin, in obedience to which no word of kindness, no act of 
confidence, falls idly to the earth. 

Among the legendary passages of Roman history, perhaps 
none makes a deeper impression, than that scene, after the 
Roman youth had been consumed at Allia, and the invading 
Gauls under Brennus had entered the city, where we behold 
the venerable Senators of the Republic, too old to flee, and 
careless of surviving the Roman name, seated each on his 
curule chair, in a temple, unarmed, looking, as Livy says, 
more august than mortal, and with the majesty of the gods. 
The Gauls gaze on them as upon sacred images, and the 
hand of slaughter, which had raged through the streets of 
Rome, is stayed by the sight of an assembly of unarmed old 
men. At length a Gaul approaches and gently strokes with 
his hands the silver beard of a Senator, who, indignant at the, 
license, smites the barbarian with his ivory staiF; which was 
the signal for general vengeance. Think you, that a band of 
savages could have slain these Senators, if the appeal to 
force had not first been made by one of their own number 1 f 

* This scene fills a large part of a book of the Iliad. (XXIV.) It is instructive 
to all, who would know what commends itself most truly to the heart of man, 
what is most truly grand, to observe that the passages of Homer which receive 
the most unquestioned admiration are — not the bloody combats even of the 
bravest chiefs, even of the gods themselves — but those two passages in which he 
has painted the gentle, unwarlike affections of our nature ; the parting of Hector 
and Andromache, and the supplication of Priam. 

t This story is recounted by Livy, Lib. V. Cap. 4, 2; also by Plutarch in hia 
life of Camillus, It is properly repudiated by Niebuhr as a legend 5 but is none 



64 

Following this sentiment in the literature of modern times 
we find its pervading presence. I will not dwell on the 
examples which arise to the mind.* I will allude only to 
that scene in Swedish poetry, where Frithiof, in deadly com- 
bat with Atle, when the falchion of the latter broke, said, 
throwing away his own weapon ; — 



Swordless foeman's life 



Ne'er dyed this gallant blade. 

The two champions now closed in mutual clutch ; they hugged 
like bears, says the Poet ; 

'Tis o'er ; for FrithioFs matchless strength 

Has felled his ponderous size ; 
And 'neath that knee, at giant length. 

Supine the Viking lies 
" But fails my sword, thou Berserk swart ! " ' 

The voice rang far and wide, 
" Its point should pierce thy iimiost heart, 

Its hilt should drink the tide." 
" Be free to lift the weaponed hand," 

Undaunted Atle spoke, 
" Hence, fearless, quest thy distant brand I 

Thus 1 abide the stroke." 

Frithiof regains his sword, intent to close the dread debate, 
while his adversary awaits the stroke ; but his heart responds 
to the generous courage of his foe ; he cannot injure one 
who has shown such confidence in him ; — 

This quelled his ire, this checked his arm, 
Outstretched the hand ofpeacc.\ 

I cannot leave these illustrations without alluding particu- 
larly to the history of the treatment of the insane, which is 
full of deep instruction, showing how strong in nature must 
be the principle, which leads us to respond to the conduct 
and feelings of others. When Pinel first proposed to remove 
the heavy chains from the raving maniacs of the hospitals of 
Paris, he was regarded as one who saw visions, or dreamed 
dreams. His wishes were gratified at last ; and the change 

the less important, as an illustration of that law, which is considered in the text. 
The heart of man confesses that the Roman Senator provoked death for himself 
and associates. 

* Guizot preserves an instance of the effect which was produced by an unarmed 
man before a violent multitude, employing the word instead of the sword. (Gui- 
zot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tom. 11. p. 36.) Who can forget that finest scene 
in that noble historical romance, the Promessi Sposi, where Fra Christofero, in 
an age of violence, after slaying a comrade in a broil, in unarmed penitence, 
seeks the presence of the family and retainers of his victim, and awakens by hia 
dignified gentleness, the admiration of those who were mad with the desire of 
vengeance ? A popular romance, which has just left the press, and is now read 
in both hemispheres, Le Jidf Errant, by Eugene Sue, has an interesting picture, 
at the close of the second volume, of the superiority of Christian courage over 
the hired and trained violence of soldiers. See Appendix, Note F. 

t Tegner's Frithiof's Sago, Canto XI. translated by Strong; Longfellow's Poets 
and Poetry of Europe, p. 161. 



66 

in the conduct of his patients was immediate; the wrinkled 
front of evil passions was smoothed into the serene counte- 
nance of Peace. The old treatment by force is now 
universally abandoned ; the law of love has taken its place j 
and all these unfortunates mingle together, un vexed by those 
restraints, which implied suspicion, and, therefore, aroused 
opposition. The warring propensities, which once filled with 
confusion and strife the hospitals for the insane while they 
were controlled by force, are a dark but feeble type of the 
present relations of nations, on whose hands are the heaivyi 
chains of military preparations, assimilating the world to one 
great mad-house ; while the peace and good-will which now 
abound in these retreats, are the happy emblems of what 
awaits the world when it shall have the wisdom to recognizia 
the supremacy of the higher sentiments of our nature;) of 
gentlenessj of confidence, of love y») . > -.jiuu iu iitii// 

It!;. 7 l);rfi'.|4 ')ih ■().:■, I (■) /I ^ i!j nt 7/fnrit vlhjsli) ^-ddi doiilw 
• I. — — ■ — making their future fliight;'T- " ' it • i n 
-(jiit*// iwdj n.'Magiiefic o'er the fixed untremiili'iigheari'."^ X' "'">',« lo 
8?;orll 'io {(jlhi)!.:.; '■ ' ''■[■•'^< ')rll ci\n-i\ f-.no 

^ I might also dwell on the recent experience, so full of 
delightful wisdom, in the treatment of the distant, degraded 
convicts of New South Wales,* showing the importance of 
confidence and kindness on the part of their overseers, in 
awakening a corresponding sentiment even in these outcastsi 
from whose souls virtue seems, at first view, to be wholly 
blotted out. Thus from all quarters, from the far-off past, 
from the far-away Pacific, from the verse of the poet, frorn 
the legend of history, from the cell of the mad-house, from 
the assembly of transported criminals, from the experience of 
daily hfe, from the universal heart of man, ascends the spon- 
taneous tribute to the prevailing power of that law, according 
to which the human heart responds to the feelings by which 
it is addressed, whether of confidenG« QVr distrustt,;Qf ioYe 

pr^hate. >','•■ ^'w h'^ - ■■; '/ ■;• ,- :■> 

o:: It will be urged that these instances are exceptions to the 
'general laws by which mankind are governed. It is not so< 
They are the unanswerable evidence of the real nature of 
man. They reveal the divinity of humanity, out of which 
all goodness, all happiness, all true greatness can alone pro- 
ceed. They disclose susceptibilities which are general, 
which are confined to no particular race of men, to no period 

* The reader is referred to the several publications of Captain Machonichie, 
whose labors of beneficence entitle him to more than a vulgar military laurel. 

9 



66 

of time, to no narrow circle of knowledge and refinement — 
susceptibilities which are present wherever two or more 
human beings come together. It is, then, on the impregnable 
ground of the universal and unalterable nature of man, that 
I place the fallacy of that prejudice, in obedience to which 
in time of peace we prepare for war. 

But this prejudice is not only founded on a misconception 
of the nature of man ; it is abhorrent to Christianity, which 
teaches that Love is more puissant than Force. To the 
reflecting mind the Omnipotence of God himself is less dis- 
cernible in the earthquake and the storm than in the gentle 
but quickening rays of the sun, and the sweet descending 
dews. And he is a careless observer who does not recognize 
the superiority of gentleness and kindness, as a mode of 
exercising influence, or securing rights among men. As the 
winds of violence beat about them, they hug those mantles, 
which they gladly throw to the earth under the genial warmth 
of a kindly sun. Thus far, nations have drawn their weap- 
ons from the earthly armories of Force, unmindful of those 
others of celestial temper from the house of Love. 

But Christianity not only teaches the superiority of Love 
over Force ; it positively enjoins the practice of the one, and 
the rejection of the other. It says ; " Love your neighbors ; " 
but it does not say ; " In time of Peace rear the massive 
fortification, build the man of war, enlist armies, train the 
militia, and accumulate military stores to be employed in 
future quarrels with your neighbors." Its precepts go still 
further. They direct that we should do unto others as we 
would have them do unto us — a golden rule for the conduct 
of nations as well as individuals, called by Confucius the 
virtue of the heart, and made by him the basis of the nine 
maxims of Government which he presented to the sovereigns 
of his country ; * but how inconsistent with that distrust of oth- 
ers, in wrongful obedience to which nations, in time of Peace, 
seem to sleep like soldiers on their arms. But its precepts go 
still further. They enjoin patience, suffering, forgiveness of 
evil, even the duty of benefiting a destroyer, " as the sandal 
wood, in the instant of its overthrow, sheds perfume on the 
axe which fells it." And can a people, in whom this faith 
is more than an idle word, consent to such enormous sacri- 
fices of money, in violation of its plainest precepts ? 

The injunction, "Love one another," is applicable to nations 

* Oeuvres de Bernardin de St. Pierre, Harmonies de la Nature, Tom. 10, p. 138. 



67 



as well as individuals. It is one of the groat laws of Heaven. 
And any one may well measure his nearness to God by the 
degree to which he regulates his conduct by this truth. 

In response to these successive views, founded on consid- 
erations of economy, of the true nature of man, and of 
Christianity, I hear the skeptical note of some defender of 
the transmitted order of things, some one who wishes " to 
fight for peace," saying, these views are beautiful but vis- 
ionary ; they are in advance of the age; the world is not 
yet prepared for their reception. To such persons (if there 
be such), I would say ; nothing can be beautiful that is not 
true ; but these views are true ; the time is now come for 
their reception ; now is the day and now is the hour. Every 
effort to impede their progress arrests the advancing hand on 
the great dial-plate of human happiness. 

The name of Washington is invoked as an authority for a 
prejudice which Economy, Humanity and Christianity all 
declare to be false. Mighty and reverend as is his name, 
more mighty and more reverend is truth. The words of 
counsel which he gave were in accordance with the spirit of 
his age, — an age which was not shocked by the slave-trade. 
But his lofty soul, which loved virtue, and inculcated justice 
and benevolence, frowns upon the efforts of those who would 
use his authority as an incentive to war. God forbid that 
his sacred character should be profanely stretched, like the 
skin of John Ziska, on a militia drum to arouse the martial 
ardor of the American people !* 

* The following table of the Military and Naval Expenditures of the United 
States, during the eight years of the administration of Washington, compared 
with those lor the last eight years, to which I have had access, will show how 
his practice accords with that of our day : 



Years. 



17S9-91 
1792 
1793 
1794 
1795 
1796 
Total during the eight years 
of Washington, 



1835 
1836 
1837 
1838 
1839 
1840 
1842 
1843 



Military Establishment. 


Naval Establishment. 


$ 835,(100 


S570 


1,223,594 


53! 


1.237,620 




2,7.33,540 


61,409 


2,573.059 


410,562 


1,474,661 


274,734 


« 10,078,062 


$847,378 


9,420.313 


3,864.939 


18,466,110 


5,800,763 


19,417,274 


6,852,060 


19,936,412 


5,175,771 


14.263,981 


6,225,003 


11,621,4.38 


6,124,445 


13.903,893 


6,246.503 


8,248,918 
$114,283,244 


7,963,678 


849,053,473 



Total during eight years. 

Thus it appears that the expenditures for the defences of the country, under 



68 

,11 It idi hrelancholy to consider the impediments which truth 
'caQcounters on its first appearance. A large portion of man- 
kind, poising themselves on the flagitious fallacy, that 
Whatever is, is right, avert their countenances from all that 
is inconsistent with established usage. I have already, in 
another part of this address, set forth the superiority of prin- 
ciple to any human example ; I would here repeat that the 
practice of nations can be no apology for a system which is 
condemned by such principles as I have now considered. 
Truth enters the world like a humble child, with few to 
receive her ; it is only when she has grown in ; years and 
stature, and the purple flush of youthful strength beams frona 
her face, that she is sought and wooed. It has been thus in 
all ages. Nay, more ; there is often an irritation excited by 
her presence ; and men who are kiud and charitable forget 
their kindness and lose their charity towards the unaccus- 
tomed stranger. It was this feeling which awarded a dungeon 
to Galileo, when he declared that the earth moved round the 
feun ; which neglected the great discovery of the circulation of 
the blood by Harvey ; and which bitterly opposed the divine 
philanthropy of Clarkson, when he first denounced the wick- 
edness of the slave-trade. But the rejected truths of to-ddjr 
shall become the chief corner-stones to the next generation* 
t' Auspicious omens in the history of the past and in the 
present, cheer us for the future. The terrible wars of the 
French Revolution were the violent rending of the body 
which preceded the exorcism'of the fiend.; Since the mornr 
ing stars first sang together, the world has not witnessed a 
peace so harmonious and enduring as that which now blesses 
the Christian nations. Great questions between them, 
fraught with strife, and in another age, sure heralds of war, 
are now determined by. arbitration or mediation. Great 
political movements, which only a few short years ago must 
have led to forcible rebellion, are now conducted by peaceful 
discussion. Literature, the press, and vaiious societies, all 
join in the holy work of inculcating good-will to man. The 
spirit of humanity tiow perf^ades the best writings, whether 

the sanction of Washington, amounted to about eleven wiiiHon dollars, while those 
during a recent similar period of eight years, stretch to upwards of one hundred 
and sixty-four million dollars ! To him who quotes the precept of Washington, 
I commend the practice. All will agree that, in this age, when the whole world 
is at peace, and when our power is assured, there is less need of these preparations 
than in an age convulsed with war, when our power was little respected. The 
only semblance of an argument in their favor is founded in the increased wealth 
of the country ; but the capacity of the countir to endure taxation is no criterion 
lA^fte joMie^'') '"iJ 'u ft-jons'l-jLi ;>ii) ml •^uTuJilmsij/.j -jiIj iiiiij Bie»qi]ii Ji t-ml'l' 



69 

the elerated philosophical inquiries of the Vestiges of Crea- 
tion^ the ingenious but melancholy moralizings of the Story 
of a Feather, or the overflowing raillery of Punch* Genius 
can never be so Promethean as when it bears the heavenly 
3re of love to the hearths of men. ii ; . . ., : , . 

It was Dr. Johnson, in the last ageyiwhb' uttered the 
detestable sentiment, that he liked " a good hater ;" the 
man of this age shall sayhe likes "a good lover." A poet, 
whose few veises; will bear him on his immortal flight with 
unflagging wing, has given expression to jtbis sentiment id 
words of uncommon pathos and power :f' ■■liqiiij;/ , > .; . koJ 

rio'IiJnOlll \\'i>, Heprayeth well who loveth welt X^^-^^'''^'* "^'' ^'^^ ^^'^^ 

bfJC ohiJiav/: AH things, both great and small., ;t9 gjil -jol .oonBl'l lo 

^.,..,>..';f \ He prayeth best who loveth best ,,. cr '»„ „„. i. 

ni ,9.0nfiVl 1' BotUian, and bird, and beast, '>fi'-'^ lo 08UfiO 9d,t ni 

-?.u!ll OiIj lo V For the dear God who lovert:h;iw^ .Ogoh B ^Vfib (IV/o 'JIJO 
1 -. , ". He made and loveth all. i, ■ t -r 

to 'H't'Jl 1'-'i!:r;:' mi ■':\h\\ ,nxi.';*UTi! ?:non) 

Every where the ancient law of hate is yielding to the law 
of love. It is sQen in the change of dress; the, armor of 
complete, steel ,wa^ the habiliment , of the knight ;, and the 
sx^-^ord was an indispensable companion of the gentleman of 
the last century ; but he would be thought a madman or a 
bully who should wear either now. It is seen in the change 
in,d|0nie,stic archit,eoture ; the places once chosen for castles 
pp^ Ijipuss?,,; w§rf JA, the most savage, : inaccessible retreats, 
where the massive structure was reared, destined solely to 
repel attacks, and to enclose its inhabitants. The monaste- 
ries and churches were fortified, and girdled by towers, raiii- 
parts and ditches, and a child was . often stationed as & 
watchmaftjT— -not of the night,— .-but tp. observe what passed 
at a distance, and announce the approach of the enemy !J 
The houses of the peaceful citizens in towns were castellated, 
often without so much as an aperture for light near the ground, 
i^^fi Avith Ipop-holes above,,^ through which the shafts 

* While this Oration was passing through the press, I read in one of the public 
prints, a letter, dated Birmingham, July 3, 1845, from which I make the following 
extract: " The Peace Question makes rapid progress in this country. I verily 
believe that if the people Were polled to-morrow, nine-tenths of them would 
pronounce all war to be unchristian, and not a few would vote for the entire abro- 
gation of our military and naval forces. The London Peace Society is doing 
much to deepen and confirm this feeling, and nearly all our cheap periodicals are 
peace-ioned." The last fact is of peculiar importance ; for it is in this way that 
the hearts of the people are to be touched. The agitation in Ireland, and that 
gigantic combination in England, the Anti-Corn Law League, proceed on the 
peace principle. '' Remember," says Mr. O'Connell, in words that will be immor- 
tal, "that no political change is worth a single <5rimey or above-ally a single drop 
of human blood." r-.r-riJiii imi-o 3(I.i .;i!l ',- ...iJUjin 

f Coleridge; Ancient Mariner. ^■>'>(jjp:<. -nt; ,'(liiii;iiii.-.i ,iu)Uj;->oI)t> 

i Guizot, Histoire de la Civilization, Tom. III-jD 'lo bno aiU U: ..leoiido itAnotu 



70 

of the cross-bow might be aimed.* In the system of fortifi- 
cations and preparations for war, nations act towards each 
other in the spirit of mistrust and barbarism, which we have 
traced in the individual, but which he has now renounced. 
In so doing, they take counsel of the wild boar in the fable, 
who whetted his tusks on a tree of the forest, when no enemy 
was near, saying that in time of peace he must prepare for 
war. But has not the time now come, when man whom 
God created in his own image, and to whom He gave the 
heaven-directed countenance, shall cease to look down to the 
beasts for examples of conduct ? 

We have already offered our homage to an early monarch 
of France, for his efforts in abolishing the Trial by Battle and 
in the cause of Peace. To another monarch of France, in 
our own day, a descendant of St. Louis, worthy of the illus- 
trious lineage, Louis Piiilippe, belongs the honest fame of 
first publishing from the thronef the truth, that Peace was 
endangered by preparations for War. " The sentiment, or 
rather the principle," he says, "that in peace you must 
prepare for war, is one of difficulty and danger ; for while 
ive keep armies on land to preserve peace, they are, at the 
same time, incentives and instruments of war. He rejoiced 
in all efforts to preserve peace, for that was what all need. 
He thought the time was cofning when we shall get rid 
entirely of war in all civilized countries." This time has 
been hailed by a generous voice from the army itself, by a 
Marshal of France, who gave as a toast at a public dinner in 
Paris,| the following words of salutation to a new and 
approaching era of happiness : "To the pacific union of the 
great human family, by the association of individuals, nations 
and races ! To the annihilation of war ! To the transform- 
ation of destructive armies into corps of industrious laborers, 
who will consecrate their lives to the cultivation and embel- 



*The two volumes of colored plates from the illuminations of Froissart, which 
have been recently published, will give an accurate idea of the system of defences 
within which private individuals sheltered themselves. For other illustrations, 
see Appendix, Note G. 

t In reply to an address by the deputation from the London Peace Convention, 
in 1843. 

X Marshal Bugeaud, Governor of Algiers, gave this toast April 7, 1840, at one 
of several public dinners at that time, to commemorate the character and services 
of Fourier. How unlike this humane and noble sentiment of the Marshal of 
France, are the braggart standing toasts at the celebrations of our National Anni- 
versary, vaunting in swelling phrase, the glories of the army, the navy, and the 
militia, while the great interests of civilization, the administration of justice, 
education, humanity, are neglected, or only introduced, like sour olives and 
mouldy cheese, at the end of the feast. 



71 

lishment of the world !" Be it our duty to speed this 
consummation ! 

To William Penn belongs the distinction, destined to 
brighten as men advance in virtue, of first in human history, 
establishing the Law of Love as a rule of conduct for the 
intercourse of nations. While he recognized as a great end 
of government, " to support power in reverence with the 
people, and to secure the people from abuse of power,"* he 
declined the superfluous protection of arms against foreign 
force, and " aimed to reduce the savage nations by just and 
gentle manners to the love of civil society and the Christian 
religion." His serene countenance, as he stands with his 
followers in what he called the sweet and clear air of Penn- 
sylvania, all unarmed, beneath the spreading elm, forming 
the great treaty of friendship with the untutored Indians, — 
who fill with savage display the surrounding forest as far as 
the eye can reach, — not to wrest their lands by violence, but 
to obtain them by peaceful purchase, is, to my mind, the 
proudest picture in the history of our country. " The great 
God," said this illustrious Quaker, in his words of sincerity 
and truth, addressed to the Sachems, " has written his law 
in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to 
love and to help, and to do good to one another. It is not 
our custom to use hostile weapons against our fellow-creatures, 
for which reason we have come unarmed. Our object is not 
to do injury, but to do good. We have met, then, in the 
broad pathway of good faith and good will, so that no advan- 
tage can be taken on either side, but all is to be openness, 
brotherhood and love ; while all are to be treated as of the 
same flesh and blood. "f These are, indeed, words of true 
greatness. " Without any carnal weapons," says one of his 
companions, " we entered the land, and inhabited therein as 
safe as if there had been thousands of garrisons." " This 
little State," says Oldmixon, " subsisted in the midst of six 
Indian nations, without so much as a militia for its defence." 
A great man, worthy of the mantle of Penn, the venerable 
philanthropist, Clarkson, in his life of the founder of Penn- 
sylvania, says, " The Pennsylvanians became armed, though 
without arms ; they became strong,««though without strength ; 
they became safe, without the ordinary means of safety. The 
constable's staff was the only instrument of authority amongst 

* Preface to Penn's Constitution. % Clarkson's Life of Penn, I. cap. 18. 



721V 

them for the greater part of a century,' and nevter,: during the 
administration of Penn, or that of his proper successors, was^ 
there a quarrel or a war. "^! ?i^fiobd rini*I mcWliff n'V 

Greater than the divinity that tJoth hedge a king, is' thei 
divinity that encompasses the righteous man, and the right-< 
eous people. The flowers of prosperity smiled in the hlessed 
footprints of William Penn. His people were unmolested* 
and happy, while (sad, but true contrast!) those of otheq 
colonies, acting upon the policy of the world, building fortsy 
and showing themselves in arms, not after receiving pro vocaft 
tion, but merely in the anticipation, or from the fear, of 
insults or danger, were harassed by perpetual ; alarms, andi 
pierced by the sharp arrows of savage wanfir .!// ni c:iit//olio^ 

This pattern of a Christian commonwealth n^Ver- fails 'to 
arrest the admiration of all who contemplate its beauties. It 
drew an epigram of eulogy from the caustic pen of Voltaire, 
and has been fondly painted by many virtuous historians. 
Every ingenuous soul in our day offers his willing tribute to 
those celestial graces of justice and humanity, by the side of 
which the flinty hardness of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rocfc 
seems earthly and coarsCi 

But let us not confine ourselves to barren words in recog- 
nition of virtue. While we see the right, and approve it, too, 
let us dare to pursue it. Let us now, in this age of civiliza-? 
tion, surrounded by Christian nations, be willing to folloWf 
the successful example of William Penn, surrounded by 
savages. Let us, while we recognize those transcendent 
ordinances of God, the Law of Right and the Law of Love, 
— the double suns which illumine the moral universe, — 
aspire to the true glory and what is higher than glory, the 
great good, of taking the lead in the disarming of the nations. 
Let us abandon the system of preparation for war in time of 
peace, as irrational, unchristian, vainly prodigal of expense, 
and having a direct tendency to excite the very evil against 
which it professes to guard. Let the enormous means thus 
released from iron hands, be devoted to labors of beneficence. 
Our battlements shall be schools, hospitals, colleges and 
churches ; our arsenals shall be libraries ; our navy shall be 
peaceful ships, on errands of perpetual commerce ; our army 
shall be the teachers of youth, and the ministers of religion. 

* Life of Penn, IT. cap. 23. — r— — - ' ' 

t Ample illustrations of this striking difference between the fate of the colony 
of Pennsylvania, and its sister colonies, may be found in Clarkson, II. cap. 22. 



73 

This is indeed, the cheap defence of nations. In such en- 
trenchments what Christian soul can be touched with fear. 
Angels of the Lord shall throw over the land an invisible, 
but impenetrable panoply ; 

Or if virtue feeble were 

Heaven itself would stoop to her.* 

At the thought of such a change in policy, the imagina- 
tion loses itself in the vain effort to follow the various streams 
of happiness, which gush forth as from a thousand hills. 
Then shall the naked be clothed and the hungry fed. Insti- 
tutions of science and learning shall crown every hill-top ; 
hospitals for the sick, and other retreats for the unfortunate 
children of the world, for all who suffer in any way, in 
mind, body or estate, shall nestle in every valley ; while 
the spires of new churches shall leap exulting to the skies. 
The whole land shall bear witness to the change ; art shall 
confess it in the new inspiration of the canvass and the mar- 
ble ; the harp of the poet shall proclaim it in a loftier rhyme. 
Above all, the heart of man shall bear witness to it in the 
elevation of his sentiments, in the expansion of his affections, 
in his devotion to the highest truth, in his appreciation of 
true greatness. The eagle of our country, without the terror 
of his beak, and dropping the forceful thunderbolt from his 
pounces, shall soar with the olive of Peace, into untried 
realms of ether, nearer to the sun. 



And here let us review the field over which we have 
passed. We have beheld war, a mode of determining jus- 
tice between nations, having its origin in an appeal, not to 
the moral and intellectual part of man's nature, distinguishing 
him from the beasts, but to that low part of his nature, which 

* These are the concluding words of that most exquisite creation of early 
genius, the Comus. I have seen them in Milton's own hand-writing, inscribed 
by himself, during his travels in Italy, as a motto, in an Album ; thus showing 
that they were regarded by him as expressing an important moral truth. The 
truth, which is thus embalmed by the grandest poet of modern times, is also 
illustrated, in familiar words by the most graceful poet of antiquity , 

Integer vitse scelerisque purus, 
Non eget Mauri jaculis, neque arcu, 
Nee venenatis gravida sagittis. 

Fusee, pharetra. 

Dryden pictures the same idea in some of his most magical lines ; 

A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, 
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged, 
Without unspotted, innocent within, 
She feared no danger, for she knew no tin. 

10 



74 

he has in common with the beasts ; we have contemplated 
its infinite miseries to the human race ; we have weighed its 
sufficiency as a mode of determining justice between nations, 
and found that it is a rude appeal to force, or a gigantic game 
of chance, in which God's children are profanely dealt with 
as a pack of cards, while in its unnatural and irrational wick- 
edness, it is justly to be likened to the monstrous and impious 
usage of Trial by Battle which disgraced the dark ages, thus 
showing that in this period of boasted civilization, justice be- 
tween nations is determined by the same rules of barbarous 
brutal force which once controlled the relations between indi- 
viduals. We have next considered the various prejudices by 
which War is sustained ; founded on a false belief in its 
necessity ; on the practice of nations past and present ; on 
the infidelity of the Christian Church ; on a false idea of 
honor ; on an exaggerated idea of the duties of patriotism ; 
and lastly that monster prejudice, which draws its vampire 
life from the vast preparations in time of peace for war ; 
dwelling at the last stage upon the thriftless, irrational and 
unchristian character of these preparations, and catching a 
vision of the exalted good that will be achieved when our 
country, learning wisdom, shall aim at the true grandeur of 
Peace. 

And now, if it be asked why, on this National Anniversary, 
in the consideration of the true grandeur of nations, I 
have thus dwelt singly and exclusively on war, it is, because 
war is utterly and irreconcilably inconsistent with true great- 
ness. Thus far mankind has worshipped, in military glory, 
an idol, compared with which the colossal images of ancient 
Babylon or modern Hindostan are but toys ; and we, in 
this blessed day of light, in this blessed land of freedom, are 
among the idolaters. The Heaven-descended injunction,- 
know thyself, still speaks to an ignorant world from the dis- 
tant letters of gold at Delphi ; know thyself; know that the 
moral nature is the most noble part of man ; transcending 
far that part which is the seat of passion, strife and war ; 
nobler than the intellect itself. Suppose war to be decided 
by force, where is the glory ? Suppose it to be decided by 
chance, where is the glory ? No ; true greatness consists in 
imitating as near as is possible for finite man, the perfections 
of an Infinite Creator ; above all, in cultivating those highest 
perfections. Justice and Love ; Justice, which like that of St. 
Louis, shall not swerve to the right hand or to the left ; 



75 

Love, which like that of William Penn shall regard all man- 
kind of kin. "God is angry," says Plato, "when anyone 
censures a man like himself, or praises a man of an opposite 
character. And the God-like man is the good man."* 
And again in another of those lovely dialogues, vocal with 
immortal truth, " Nothing resembles God more than that 
man among us who has arrived at the highest degree of 
justice." f The true greatness of nations is in those qualities 
which constitute the greatness of the individual. It is not 
to be found in extent of territory nor in vastness of popula- 
tion, nor in wealth ; not in fortifications, or armies, or navies ; 
not in the phosphorescent glare of fields of battle ; not in 
Golgothas, though covered by monuments that kiss the 
clouds ; for all these are the creatures and representatives of 
those qualities in our nature, which are unlike anything in 
God's nature. 

Nor is the greatness of nations to be found in triumphs of 
the intellect alone, in literature, learning, science or art. 
The polished Greeks, the world's masters in the delights of 
language, and in range of thought, and the commanding 
Romans, overawing the earth with their power, were little 
more than splendid savages ; and the age of Louis XIV of 
France, spanning so long a period of ordinary worldly mag- 
nificence, thronged by marshals bending under military laurels, 
enlivened by the unsurpassed comedy of Moliere, dignified 
by the tragic genius of Corneille, illumined by the splendors 
of Bossuet, is degraded by immoralities that cannot be men- 
tioned without a blush, by a heartlessness in comparison with 
which the ice of Nova Zembla is warm, and by a succession 
of deeds of injustice not to be washed out by the tears of all 
the recording angels of Heaven.J 

The true greatness of a nation cannot be in triumphs of 
the intellect alone. Literature and art may widen the sphere 
of its influence ; they may adorn it ; but they are in their 
nature but accessaries. The true grandeur of humanity is 

* Minos, § 12, t Theaetetus, ^ 87, 

|; The false glory of Louis XIV, which procured for him, from flattering cour- 
tiers and a barbarous world the title of Great, was questioned by one of his own 
subjects, the good Abbe de Saint Pierre. To this early Apostle of Humanity 
and Peace, the author of the Frojet de paix perpeluelle , the advocate of good 
will to man, the world as it wakes from its martial trance, shall offer large trib- 
utes of admiration and gratitude. His voice was that of one crying in the wilder- 
ness ; but it was the herald of the reign of Peace. He enriched the French 
language with the word bienfaisance ; and D'Alembert said that it was right that 
he should have invented the word, who practised so largely the virtue which it 
expressed. The good Abb6 is not to be confounded with the eccentric and elo- 
quent Bernardin de Saint Pierre the author of Paul and Virginia. 



76 

in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the 
intellect of man. The truest tokens of this grandeur in a State 
are the diffusion of the greatest happiness among the greatest 
number, and that passionless, God-like justice, which controls 
the relations of the State to other States, and to all the people, 
who are committed to its charge. 

But war crushes with bloody heel all justice, all happiness, 
all that is God-like in man. '^ It is," says the eloquent Rob- 
ert Hall, " the temporary repeal of all the principles of virtue." 
True, it cannot be disguised, that there are passages in its dreary 
annals cheered by deeds of generosity and sacrifice. But the 
virtues which shed their charm over its horrors are all bor- 
rowed of Peace ; they are emanations of the spirit of love, 
which is so strong in the heart of man, that it survives the 
rudest assaults. The flowers of gentleness, of kindliness, of 
fidelity, of humanity, which flourish in unregarded luxuriance 
in the rich meadows of Peace, receive unwonted admiration 
when we discern them in war, like violets shedding their per- 
fume on the perilous edges of the precipice, beyond the 
smiling borders of civilization. God be praised for all the 
examples of magnanimous virtue which he has vouchsafed to 
mankind ! God be praised that the Roman Emperor, about 
to start on a distant expedition of war, encompassed by 
squadrons of cavalry and by golden eagles which moved in 
the winds, stooped from his saddle to listen to the prayer of 
the humble widow, demanding justice for the death of her 
son !* God be praised that Sydney, on the field of battle, 
gave with dying hand the cup of cold water to the dying 
soldier ! That single act of self-forgetful sacrifice has conse- 
crated the fenny field of Zutphen, far, oh ! far beyond its 
battle ; it has consecrated thy name, gallant Sydney, beyond 
any feat of thy sword, beyond any triumph of thy pen. 
But there are hands outstretched elsewhere than on fields of 
blood, for so little as a cup of cold water ; the world is full 
of opportunities for deeds of kindness. Let me not be told, 
then, of the virtues of War. Let not the acts of generosity 
and sacrifice which have triumphed on its fields, be invoked 
in its defence. In the words of Oriental imagery, the pois- 
onous tree, though watered by nectar, can produce only the 
fruit of death ! 

* This most admired instance of justice, according to the legends of the 
Catholic Church, opened to Trajan, although a heathen, the gates of salvation. 
Dante found the scene and the visible parlare of the widow and Emperor storied 
on the walls of Purgatory, and he has transmitted them in a passage which 
commends itself hardly less than any in the Divine Poem- Purgaiorio, Canto X. 



77 

As we cast our eyes over the history of nations we discern 
with horror the succession of murderous slaughters by which 
their progress has been marked. As the hunter traces the 
wild beast, when pursued to his lair by the drops of blood on 
the earth, so we follow Man, faint, weary, staggering with 
wounds, through the Black Forest of the Past, which he has 
reddened with his gore. Oh ! let it not be in the future ages 
as in those which we now contemplate. Let the grandeur 
of man be discerned in the blessings which he has secured ; 
in the good he has accomplished; in the triumphs of benevo- 
lence and justice ; in the establishment of perpetual peace.* 

As the ocean washes every shore, and clasps, with all-em- 
bracing arms, every land, while it bears on its heaving bosom 
the products of various climes ; so Peace surrounds, protects 
and upholds all other blessings. Without it commerce is 
vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, happiness is blasted, 
virtue sickens and dies. 

And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison 
with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, 
fields held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose 
their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly Heavenly 
stature, — not when we follow him over the ice of the Dela- 
ware to the capture of Trenton, — not when we behold him 
victorious over Cornwallisat Yorktown ; but when we regard 
him, in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown 
which a faithless soldiery proffered, and at a later day, up- 
holding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he 
received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying 
for war. What glory of battle in England's annals will not 
fade by the side of that great act of Justice, by which her 
Legislature, at a cost of one hundred million dollars, gave 
freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves ! And when the 
day shall come, (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams !) 
that shall witness an act of greater justice still, the peaceful 
emancipation of three millions of our fellow-men, " guilty of 



* Man alone of the animal creation preys upon his own species I The kingly 
lion does not prey upon his brother lion ; the ferocious tiger does not prey upon 
kindred tigers. 

Sed jam serpentuin major concordia; parcit 
Cognatis maculis similis fera. Quando leoni 
Fortioreripuit vitam leo ? quo nemore unquam 
Exspiravit aper majoris dentibus apri ? 
Indica tigris agi, rabida cum tigride pacem 
Perpetuam. 

Juvenal, Sat. XV. 169. 



78 

a skin not colored as our own," now held in gloomy bond- 
age, under the constitution of our country, then shall there 
be a victory, in comparison with which that of Bunker Hill 
shall be as a farthing-candle held up to the sun. That vic- 
tory shall need no monument of stone. It shall be written 
on the grateful hearts of uncounted multitudes, that shall 
proclaim it to the latest generation. It shall be one of the 
great land-marks of civilization ; nay more, it shall be one of 
the links in the golden chain by which Humanity shall con- 
nect itself with the throne of God. 

As the cedars of Lebanon are higher than the grass of the 
valley ; as the heavens are higher than the earth ; as man is 
higher than the beasts of the field ; as the angels are higher 
than man ; as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that 
taketh a city ; so are the virtues and victories of Peace higher 
than the virtues and victories of War. 

Far be from us, fellow-citizens, on this Anniversary, the 
illusions of National freedom in which we are too prone to 
indulge. We have but half done, when we have made our- 
selves free. Let not the scornful taunt be directed at us ; 
" They wish to be free ; but know not how to be just." * 
Freedom is not an end in itself; but. a means only ; a means 
of securing Justice and Happiness, the real end and aim of 
States, as of every human heart. It becomes us to inquire 
earnestly if there is not much to be done by which these can 
be promoted. If I have succeeded in impressing on your 
minds the truths, which I have upheld to-day, you will be 
ready to join in efforts for the Abolition of War, and of all 
preparation for War, as indispensable to the true grandeur of 
our country. 

To this great work let me summon you. That Future 
which filled the lofty visions of the sages and bards of Greece 
and Rome, which was foretold by the prophets and heralded 
by the evangelists, when man in Happy Isles, or in a new 
Paradise, shall confess the loveliness of Peace, may be 
secured by your care, if not for yourselves, at least for your 
children. Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. 
The true golden age is before you, not behind you. If man 
has been driven once from Paradise, while an angel with a 
flaming sword forbade his return, there is another Paradise, 
even on earth, which he may form for himself, by the culti- 
vation of the kindly virtues of life, where the confusion of 

* lis veulent etre librea et ne savent pas Stre justes. — Abbe Sieyet. 



79 

tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, where there 
shall be a perpetual jocund spring, and sweet strains borne 
on " the odoriferous wing of gentle gales," more pleasant 
than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the garden of the Hes- 
perides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit. 

Let it not be said that the age does not demand this work. 
The mighty conquerors of the Past, from their fiery sepul- 
chres, demand it ; the blood of millions unjustly shed in war 
crying from the ground demands it ; the voices of all good 
men demand it ; the conscience even of the soldier whispers 
" Peace." There are considerations, springing from our 
situation and condition, which fervently invite us to take the 
lead in this great work. To this should bend the patriotic 
ardor of the land; the ambition of the statesman ; the efforts 
of the scholar ; the pervasive influence of the press ; the 
mild persuasion of the sanctuary ; the early teachings of the 
school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried 
fields for exalted triumphs, more truly worthy the American 
name, than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is 
known as the Last Reason of Kings. Let it be no reason 
of our Republic. Let us renounce and throw off for ever the 
yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals 
of the world. As those standing on the mountain-tops first 
discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the van- 
tage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascend- 
ing sun of a new era ! Lift high the gates, and let the 
King of Glory in — the King of true Glory — of Peace. I 
catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and 
beauty ; * 

And let the whole earth be filled with his glory ! 

It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at 
least one spot, the small Island of Delos, dedicated to the 
Gods, and kept at all times sacred from war, where the citi- 
zens of hostile countries met and united in a common wor- 
ship. So let us dedicate our broad country ! The Temple 
of Honor shall be surrounded by the Temple of Concord, so 
that the former can be entered only through the portals of 
the latter ; the horn of Abundance shall overflow at its gates ; 
the angel of Religion shall be the guide over its steps of 
flashing adamant ; while within Justice, returned to the earth 

* The services of the choir at the Church, where the Oration was delivered, 
were performed by the youthful daughters of the public schools of Boston. 



80 

from her long exile in the skies, shall rear her serene and 
majestic front. And the future chiefs of the Republic, des- 
tined to uphold the glories of a new era, unspotted by human 
blood, shall be " the first in Peace, and the first in the 
hearts of their countrymen." 

But while we seek these blissful glories for ourselves, let 
us strive to extend them to other lands. Let the bugles 
sound the Truce of God to the whole world for ever. Let 
the selfish boast of the Spartan women become the grand 
chorus of mankind, that they have never seen the smoke of 
an enemy's camp. Let the iron belt of martial music which 
now encompasses the earth, be exchanged for the golden 
cestus of Peace, clothing all with celestial beauty. History 
dwells with fondness on the reverent homage, that was be- 
stowed, by massacring soldiers, on the spot occupied by the 
Sepulchre of the Lord. Vain man ! to restrain his regard 
to a few feet of sacred mould ! The whole earth is the 
Sepulchre of the Lord ; nor can any righteous man profane 
any part thereof. Let us recognize this truth ; and now, on 
this Sabbath of our country, lay a new stone in the grand 
Temple of Universal Peace, whose dome shall be as lofty 
as the firmament of Heaven, as broad and comprehensive as 
the earth itself. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE A. 

[Referred to on page 8^] 

The following letter has been published at the suggestion of several friends, as 
illustrating a topic considered in the text. 

July 6th, 1P,45. 

My dkar , 

It has occurred to me that you might have thought me wanting in franliness, 
when 1 avoided expressing a positive opinion with regard to the righteousness of 
the resistance of our Fathers to taxation by the British Parliament. I am very 
desirous, on many accounts, of not disturbing that question ; " Let the Dead 
Past bury its Dead " 1 wish to confine myself to the Present and the Future. 

There is one conclusion following with irresistible force, from the assumption 
that our Fathers were justifiable in their course, which neither of us would wish 
to have promulgated. It relates to the present condition of our slaves. At the 
time of the Stamp .^ct and Tea Tax, the population of the Colonies amounted to 
about two millions (according to Mr. Burke, though our writers have called it 
three); their grievance, their slavery, was the necessity of paying a few pence, 
more or less on certain things, under the direction of a Parliament in which they 
were not represented. No just or humane person can fail to perceive that all 
this was as a feather compared with the rod of oppression, now held by our 
country over more than three millions of fellow men. if two millions were 
justified in resisting by force the assumptions of the British Parliament, as con- 
trary to the law of nature, the principles of the common law, and the rights of 
Freedom ; then a fortiori, the three millions of blacks, into whose souls we thrust 
the iron of the deadliest slavery the world has yet witnessed, would be 
justified in resisting by force the power that holds them in bondage. Can we 
proclaim such a truth ? 

To me, the more humane, the more Christian, the more expedient course, 
seems to be to leave that great question undisturbed in the coffins of our Fathers. 
There are minor rules of propriety, not to say of politeness and good breeding, 
that seem to indicate the same conclusion. The customary tone of reference to 
the war of the Revolution is in a spirit which would be considered indelicate 
with regard to any private or personal experience ; and it seems to me well 
worthy of consideration, whether the time has not come for nations to put aside 
their habits of boasting, as indecorous, if not unchristian. The propriety of this 
course must commend itself, not only to those, who may regard the conduct of 
the Fathers of the Revolution as questionable, but even to those who think it 
entirely justifiable. Even if the great trial by battle be regarded as a rational 

11 



82 

mode of determininffyMS/tce between nations ; should not the place of encounter 
be held rather iis a lield of execution, than of triumph ? We do not erect monu- 
ments to commemorate the scenes of public executions. * » * * 
Very faithfully yours, 

Charles Sumnek. 



NOTE B. 

[Referred to on page 23.] 

In this note I propose to present a sketch of the history of Private Wars and 
of the I'rial by Battle. Let it be borne in mind, that the same sentiments which 
lead us to condemn these as impious and monstrous, equally condemn wars 
between nations. 1 cannot dwell too much upon the importance of this parallel; 
and I would here repeat what is set forth in the text, though not with sufficient 
prominence, that all IVar between civilized Christian nations is a mere Trial of 
Right, or a mode of determinijig justice between tliem,m this respect resem- 
bling precisely the Trial by Battle. It is a mode of litigation, or of determining 
a. Lis Pendens between nations. This, of course, excludes the idea of self-de- 
fence. The supposed right of self-defence might arise, if a pirate should enter 
our harbors, for the mere purpose of murder or plunder; but it is irrational and 
vain to suppose that there is any element of self-defence in a war to determine 
a dispute or litij^ation between nations. I hope to brand the phrase defensive 
wars as absurd, and expressing in our age, and among Christian nations, an impos- 
sible idea. It is a part ot the " flash language" of war and diplomacy, which 
should now be exploded. 1 repeat, again, that all war is a mere Trial by Battle 
between nations; and as such, no one can fail to pronounce it, in the language of 
Montesquieu, monstrous, and in the language of the old Lombard monarch, 
impious. 

Private Wars. 'I'he system of yrivate wars may be traced to the dark 
woods of Ancient Germany, where the right of avenging injuries was treated as 
a private and personal right, exercised by force of arms, without reference to an 
umpire, or appeal to a magistrate for decision. Emerging from thence, it pre- 
vailed in the early centuries of modern times, in all the countries of Europe, though 
few traces of it are to be found in England after the Conquest, except in timesof 
civil trouble and commotion. Though the avenging of injuries was the only mo- 
tive that could legally authorize private wars, yet they often arose from disputes 
concerning civil property. They were carried on with all the destructive rage 
which is to be dreaded from violent resentment when armed with force, and 
authorized by law. The invasion of the most barbarous enemy w.as not more 
desolating to a country or more grievous to its inhabitants. Various ineffectual 
efforts were made for their suppression. A Bishop of Aquitaine, A. D. 1032, pre- 
tended that an angel had appeared to him and brought him a writing t>om Heaven, 
enjoining men to cease from their hostilities, and be reconciled to each other. 
It was during a season of public calamity that he published this revelation, the 
minds of men were disposed to receive supernatural impressions, and consented 
to a general peace and cessation of hostilities, which continued for seven years. 
A resolution was formed that no man should in time to come, attack or molest 
his adversaries during the seasons set apart for celebrating the great festivities of 
the church, or from the evening of Thursday in each week to the morning of 
Monday in the week ensuing, the intervening days being considered as particu- 
larly holy, the Lord's Passion having happened on one of these days, and his 
Resurrection on another. A change in the disposition of men so sudden, and 
producing a resolution so unexpected, was considered as miraculous, and the 
respite of hostilities, which followed upon it, was called The Truce of God. 
This from being a regulation or concert in one kingdom, became a general law 
in Christendom, and was confirmed by the authority of the Pope, and the violators 
of it were subject to the penalty of excommunication. The custom of private 
war still continued; but was discountenanced by St. Louis, until finally Charles 
VI in 1413, issued an ordinance expressly prohibiting it on any pretext whatso- 
ever, with power to the magistrates to compel all persons to comply with this 
injunction, and to punish such as should prove refractory or disobedient. Later 



. 83 

than this there is an instance of a pitched battle in the reign of Edward IV of 
England, at Nibley Green, in Gloucestershire, on the 10th of August, 1470, be- 
tween two powerful nobles, William, Lord Berkley, and Thomas, Viscount Lisle. 
Both brought a large number of men into the field ; an hundred and fifty men 
were killed in the action. After the battle. Lord Berkley repaired to the Castle 
of Lord Lisle, at Wotton, and it was ransomed as a place taken in regular war. 
The cause of this feud was the right of succession to the lands of Berkley. 
The law-suit which gave occasion to this battle, lasted a hundred and ninety-two 
years, and during its progress the Castle of Berkley was once taken by surprise, 
and its inhabitants thrown into prison ; it was besides, frequently attacked and 
defended, with much effusion of blood. (Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 69, for 
April, 1845.) 

Let us close this sketch in the words of Robertson; in allusion to the regula- 
tions for the abolition of private war; " How slow is the progress of reason and 
civil order! Regulations which to us appear so equitable, obvious and simple, 
required the efforts of civil and ecclesiastical authority, during several centuries, 
to introduce and establish them." * 

Trial by Battle. The trial by battle, or the judicial combat, was a formal 
and legitimate mode of determining disputes. This, likewise, may be traced 
to the ancient Germans; for it appears by a passage in Velleius Paterculus 
(L. H. c. 118), that all questions which were decided among the Romans by 
trial, were terminated among them by the sword ; the Roman laws and method 
of trial, which Quintilius Varus attenipted to introduce among them, were regard- 
ed as novitas incognitee discipUna, ut solita armis decerni jure terminarentur. It 
afterwards extended to the other countries of Europe, though it does not seem 
to have established itself completely in France, till after the time of Charle- 
magne. It seems to have been popular in Lombardy, though Luitprand, 
King of the Lombards, in one of his laws in 713, expressly admits its impiety ; 
Incerti sumus de judicio Dei et quosdam andivimus per pugnam sine justa 
causa suam causam perdere. Sed propter consuetudinem gentis nostras Longo- 
bardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus. (Muratori, Rerum Italic. Script, t. 
2, p. 65.) Like the other ordeals, by the burning ploughshares, by the holding 
hot iron, by dipping the hand in hot water, or hot oil, it was a presumptuous 
appeal to Providence, under an apprehension and hope that Heaven would 
give the victory to him who had the right. It was the child of superstition and 
brute force. 

it seems probable that the trial by battle was originally permitted, in order to 
determine points respecting the personal character, or reputation of individuals, 
and was afterward extended, not only to criminal cases, but to questions con- 
cerning property. In the year 961, a controversy concerning the church of St. 
Medard, whether it belonged to the Abbey of Beaulieu, was terminated by judi- 
cial combat. The Abbot Wittikindus considered it as the best and most honora- 
ble mode of determining a grave point of law. " It was a matter of doubt and 
dispute," says the Abbot, " whether the sons of a son ought to be reckoned 
among the children of the family, and succeed equally with their uncles if their 
father happened to die while their grandfather was alive. An assembly was 
called to deliberate on this point, and it was the general opinion that it ought to 
be remitted to the examination and decision of judges. But the Emperor, 
[Otho 11] /oWoiomg- a better course, and desirous of dealing honorably with 
his people and nobles, appointed the matter to be decided between two champions. 
He who appeared in behalf of the right of children to represent their deceased 
father was victorious; and it was established by a perpetual decree, that they 
should hereafter share in the inheritance together with their uncles." This was 
under the German Emperor. Otho 11 in the tenth century. But the folly of man 
did not end here. A question of religion, as well as of law, was submitted to 
the same arbitrament. In the eleventh century the question was agitated in 
Spain, whether the Musarabic Liturgy which had been used in the Churches of 
Spain, or the Liturgy approved by the See of Rome, differing in many particulars 
from the other, contained the form of worship most acceptable to the Deity. 
The Spaniards contended zealously for the liturgy of their ancestors. The 



* The subject of private war ia treated with an exactness, perspicuity and comprehen- 
siveness by Dr. Robertson (Hist, of Charles V. Vol I. note 21), which have inspired the 
warm commendation of Mr. Hallam. (Hi.story of Middle Ages Vol. 11,-155, cap. 2, pi. 
2.) It also occupies the attention of our countryman (Mr. Wheaton), in his History of 
the Northmen ; and of the humane and accomplished historian of France, Sismondi. 
(Histoire des Fran9ais, Tome VIII. 72-77.) 



84 

Popes urged the reception of that which had their infallible sanction. The 
question was referred to the trial by battle. Two knights in complete armor 
entered the lists. John Ruys de Matanca, the champion of the Musarabic Lit- 
urgy, was victorious. 

VVhile the trial by battle subsisted, proofs by charter, contracts or persons, be- 
came ineffectual. When a charter or other instrument was introduced by one of 
the parties, his opponent might challenge it, affirm that it was false and forged, 
and offer to prove this by combat. So he might accuse a witness, whom he 
suspected of being about to give testimony against him, of being suborned, give 
him the lie, and challenge him to combat; and if the witness was vanquished, 
no other evidence was admitted, and the party by whom he was summoned 
lost his cause. The reason given for obliging a witness to accept of defiance, 
and to defend himself by combat, contams the idea of what is called the 
point of honor ; " for it is just, that if any one affirms that he perfectly knows 
the truth of any thing, and offers to give oath upon it, that he should not 
hesitate to maintain the veracity of his affirmation in combat." Leg. Bur- 
gund. tit. 45. 

The trial by battle extended itself so generally in France, if not in other parts 
of Europe, as at one time to supersede all the other ordeals, which were regarded 
also as judgments of God, and even the mode by proofs. In Orleans it was 
restrained to civil matters, involving upwards of six sous in amount, [Montes- 
quieu, Esp. des Lois Liv. "28, cap '20.] Kegulations of great minuteness were 
established with regard to the ceremonies; and this inonstrous ^lsage, as it is 
called by Montesquieu, was reduced to a system, and illustrated by an extensive 
jurisprudence. Men, says this ingenious Frenchman, subject to rules even their 
prejudices. Nothing was more contrary to good sense, than the judicial combat, 
but being once recognized, it was conducted with a certain prudence. In this 
respect, as in many others, it bears a resemblance to the great trial by battle 
which still prevails between nations; and which has its artificial and complex 
regulations, the so called laws of war. 

T"he field for the combat was selected with care ; and in many places there was 
an open space for this purpose in the neighborhood of the Church. We learn 
by an accidental notice in Froissart, that there was a tribune attached to the 
walls of the Abbey of St. German des Prcs, in Paris, which was destined for the 
judges of the combat, and which overlooked the meadow aux Clercs, which 
served for a field. (Froissart, c. 383, p. 290; Sismondi, Histoire, X. 514.) 'I'he 
ground being selected, a large fire was kindled, and a gallows erected for the 
vanquished. Two seats covered with black were also prepared for the combat- 
ants, on which they received certain admonitions, and were made to swear on the 
Holy Evangelists that they had not had recourse to sorcery, witchcraft, or incan- 
tation. They had previously attended the celebration of mass, the forms of 
which for such occasions are still to be found in certain old missals, where it is 
called 7nissa pro duello. In certain cases of physical inability, and where 
women and the clergy were concerned, a battle by proxy was allowed, and regu- 
lar bravoes, called champions, were hired for this purpose ; dreadful trade, it 
would seem, since the right hand of the champion was lopped off in the event 
of his being worsted. Meanwhile the principals were kept out of the lists 
with ropes about their necks, and he who was beaten by proxy was forthwith 
hanged in person, although in certain cases he was allowed to be decapitated. 
(Millingen, Hist, of Duelling, Vol. L 31, 32 ; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Liv. 
'28, cap 19.) 

In England, trial by battle was conducted with peculiar form in the presence 
of the judges in their scarlet robes, who presided over the field which was duly 
set out of sixty feet square, and enclosed by lists. It appears that trials of this 
kind were so frequent, that fines, paid on these occasions, made no inconsiderable 
branch of the King's Revenue. (Madox, Hist Excheq. Vol. L 349.) For some- 
time after the conquest the only mode of trying a writ of right, for the determin- 
ation of the title to real property was this barbarous proceeding; but Henry II, 
by consent of parliament, introduced the grand assise, a peculiar species of trial 
l^y j"''y)in concurrence therewith ; giving the party against whom the action is 
brought his choice of either the one or the other. The establishment of this 
alternative is pronounced by Glanville, his Chief Justice, and probably his adviser 
therein, a certain benefit. He says ; duelli casum declinare possint homines am- 
biguum. Jus enim, quod post midtus el longus dilationes vix evincitur per duel- 
lum, per beneficium istius constitutionis comniodius et acceleratius expeditur, 
(I. 2. c. 7.) Atrial by combat was appointed in England in 1571, under the in- 
spection of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas; but Queen Elizabeth 



85 

interposed her authority, and enjoined the parties to compound the matter ; yet 
in order to preserve what was called their honor, the lists were marked out, and 
all the forms previous to the combat were observed with much ceremony. 
(Spelm. Gloss, veb. campus, p. 103.) The last time that this trial was actually 
awarded in England, was in 1631, between Lord Rae and Mr. Ramsay. Kin^ 
Charles I appointed, by commission, a constable of England to preside over if 
who proclaimed a day, on which the combatants were to appear with a spear, a' 
long sword, a short sword, and a dagger; but this was accommodated without 
bloodshed. (Hargrave, State Trials, XI. 121.) The form of proceeding fell into 
desuetude, overruled by the advancing spirit of civilization ; but, to the disgrace 
of the English law, it was not legislatively abolished till in 1817 the right to it 
had been distinctly claimed in the Court of King's Bench. Abraham Thornton 
in an appeal against him for murder, when brought into Court, pleaded as follows ; 
" Not Guilty, and I am ready to defend the same by my body ; " and thereupon 
taking oft" his glove, he threw it upon the floor of the Court. 'I'he appellant did 
not choose to submit to this trial, and abandoned his proceedings. In the next 
session of parliament, trial by battle was abolished in England. (Blackstone, 
Com. Vol. in. 337, Chitty's note ) The Attorney General, in introducing the bill 
for this purpose, remarked, that " if the party had persevered, he had no doubt the 
legislature would have felt it their imperious duty to interfere and pass an ex post 
facto law, to prevent so degrading a spectacle from taking place" Annual Regis- 
ter, Vol. LXI. p. 52. (1819). Is not war between nations an equally degrading 
spectacle 1 

(O'f he principal modern authorities for the history of the judicial combat are 
the .admirable note by Robertson (History of Charles V. Vol. I. note 22) ; Mon- 
tesquieu (Esprit des Lois. Liv. 28, cap. 17-29), whose luminous mind has cast 
upon it a brilliant flood of light; Blackstone (Commentaries, Vol. III. 337-351; 
Vol. IV. 346-348, 419) ; Hallam (Middle Ages, Vol. I. 187, cap. 2, pt. 2); the hu- 
mane and accomplished Sismondi (Histoire des Fran^ais VIII. 77,78); Guizot, 
in a work of remarkable beauty of historical inquiry and depth of philosophy, 
more grave than the Esprit des Lois, and enlightened by loftier ideas of human 
progress and virtue (Histoire de la Civilization en France depuis la chute de 
I'Empire Romain,Tome IV. 89, 149-166) ; our learned countryman, Mr. Wheaton 
(History of the Northmen, Cap III and XII); and Millingen (History of Duelling, 
2 vols.), a writer, hardly deserving the character of an authority, and utterly un- 
worthy a place in this fellowship of authors. 



NOTE C. 

[Referred to on page 29.] 

A Congress of Nations and Arbitration. It is intended to offer in 
this Note, a sketch of the efforts of private men, and the examples of Nations 
tending to a Congress of Nations, or an established system of Arbitration without 
appeal to War. 

The duty and importance of Universal Peace was recommended by the early 
Fathers of the Ciiristian Church. The character of the good Man of Peace was 
described in the 15th century, in that work of unexampled circulation, which has 
been translated into all modern languages, and republished more than a thousand 
times. (De Imitatione Christi, by Thomas a, Kempis, Lib. 2. cap. 3). The wri- 
tings of Erasmus at the close of the same century, abound in the spirit of Peace. 
In the 17th century, Nicole, a friend of Pascal, one of the fellowship of Port 
Royal, and one of the highest names in the Church of France, in his Essais de 
Morale, in six volumes, gave to the world Traite des Moyens de conserver la Paix 
avec les Hommea, a treatise which Voltaire terms " a master-piece to which 
nothing equal has been left to us by Antiquity." (Siecle de Louis XIV. See 
Hallam's History of Literature, Vol. III. 383, part IV. cap. 4). It is to be found 
in a recent edition of the Pensees de Pascal. The reader of our day cannot per- 
ceive in it the exalted merit which drew forth the eulogy of Voltaire. At 
the beginning of the 18th century appeared the Projet de Paix Perpetutlle, in 
three volumes, by the Abbe Saint Pierre, which the benevolent author, by a 
species of pious fraud, attributed to Henry IV. and his Minister Sully, with the 
view of recommending it to the adoption of the Sovereigns and Ministers, to 
whom the authority of these great names would be more imposing than the 
intrinsic merit of the scheme itself. His ideas were characterized by the profli- 



86 

gate minister and cardinal Dubois as les reves d'un kotnme de bien. Afterwards 
in 1761, that great genius, Rousseau published a little work to which he modestly 
gave the title, Extrait du Projet de Paix perpetuelle de M'VAbhide Saint Pierre. 
Without appealing to those higher motives, for addressing which to sovereigns 
Saint Pierre had most unjustly incurred the ridicule of practical statesment. 
such as the love of true glory, of humanity, and a regard to the dictates of con- 
science and the precepts of religion, Rousseau merely supposes princes to be 
endowed with common sense, and capable of estimating how much their inter- 
ests would be promoted by submitting their respective pretensions to the arbitra- 
tion of an impartial tribunal, rather than resorting to the uncertain issue of 
arms, which even to the victor cannot bring adequate compensation for the blood 
and treasure expended in the contest. (See Wheaton's History of the Law of 
Nations, part 2. ^ 17.) 

There are fragments of a Project of Perpetual Peace, by the late Jeremy 
Benlham, recently published from MSS. bearing date from 1786 to 1789, under 
the superintendence of his Executor, Dr. Bowring (Part 8. pp. 537-554, Lon- 
don, 1839), which are marked by the penetrating sense and humanity of their 
author. 

Of late years, several writers of the different schools of German philosophy, 
have proposed the establishment of an Amphictyonic council of Nations, by 
which their mutual differences might be judiciously settled, and the guilt and 
misery of war for ever abolished among civilized nations. One of the most re- 
markable of these projects of Perpetual Peace was that published by Kant in 
1795. He says; " What we mean to propose is a general Congress of Nations, 
of which both the meeting and the duration are to depend entirely on the sove- 
reign wills of the League, and not an indissoluble Union like that which exists 
between the several States of North America founded on a Municipal constitu- 
tion. Such a Congress, and such a League, are the only means of realizing the 
idea of a true public law, according to which the difference between nations 
would be determined by civil proceedings as those between individuals are de- 
termined by civil judicature, instead of resorting to war, a means of redress 
worthy only of barbarians." Kant, Rechtslehre, Zweiten Theil, § 61. The 
principles of Kant on this subject have been contested by another celebrated 
German Philosopher, Hegel, in the spirit of one whose mind was so imbued with 
the history of the Past, as to be insensible to the charms of Peace. A state of 
perpetual peace, he says, if it could be realized, would produce a moral stagna- 
tion among nations. Hegel, Philosophic des Rechts, herausgegeben von Gans, 
§ 321-339. See also Wheaton's History of the Law of Nations, part 4, $ 36, 37. 

Most important information on this subject is collected in the volume of Prize 
Essays published by the American Peace Society, and in a little tract, entitled, a 
Congress of Nations, by the same Society. Tlie useful life of the late William 
Ladd was devoted to the diffusion of information on this subject. 

A General Peace Convention was held in London, in June, 1843, composed of 
delegates from various countries, which was organized by the choice of Charles 
Hindley, Esq., M. P., as President, and the Marquis de la Rochefoucault Lian- 
court, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, as Vice President. The 
Convention was graced by the presence of many persons, well known for their 
labors of philanthropy. Among those prominent in political life who took a part 
in its proceedings, were Lord Robert Grosvenor, William Sherman Crawford, 
M. P., Richard Cobden, M. P., Joseph Hume, M. P., W. Ewart, M. P., Dr. 
Bowring, M. P. 

The Convention was called together on the principle, " that war is inconsistent 
with the spirit of Christianity and with the true interests of mankind." The fol- 
lowing are among the Resolutions which it adopted : 

On Arbitration instead of War. " That this Convention earnestly recom- 
mends to Governments, Members of Legislative bodies, and public function- 
aries, the adoption of the principle of arbitration for the adjustment of all 
international differences ; and that stipulations be introduced into all international 
treaties to provide for this mode of adjustment; whereby recourse to war 
may be entirely avoided between such nations as shall agree to abide by such 
stipulation." 

On a Congress of Nations. "That while recommending the plan of Judge 
Jay, which proposes that Nations should enter into treaty stipulations to 
refer their differences to the arbitration of a friendly power, as a measure 
the most immediately available for the prevention of war, we still regard, as 

fieace societies have from their origin regarded, especially as set forth by the 
ate William Ladd, Esq., a Congress of Nations to settle and perfect the code 



87 

of inlernationnl law, and a High Court of Nations to interpret and appli/ that 
for the. settlement of all National disputes, as that which should be further kept 
in view by the friends of peace, and urged upon the Governments as one of 
the best practical modes of settling peacefully and satisfactorily such interna- 
tional disputes." 

On Preparation for War. " That in the opinion of this Convention, prepara- 
tions for war are so many incentives to war, and ought to be discouraged by all 
friends of peace." 

There are now Peace Societies at London, at Paris, at Brussels, at Geneva, 
all cooperating in this holy cause. The American Peace Society is the oldest, 
and has already been the means of great good. It has adopted as a fundamental 
article in its constitution the declaration that all loar is forbidden by Christianity. 
Its officers and principal members include some of the most prominent divines 
and public characters of our country ; among whom are the President, S. E. 
Coues, Rev. Andrew P. Peabody, of Portsmouth , JN. Hj Rev. Charles Lowell, 
of Boston; Rev. Ezra S. Gannett, of Boston; Rev. Francis VVayland, of Provi- 
dence, R. L; Rev. C. E. Stowe, of Cincinnati ; Rev. Howard Malcom, of 
Georgetown, Ky. ; Theodore ^>elinghllysen, of JNew York; William W. Ells- 
worth, of Hartford, Conn. ; Gerrit Smith, of Peterborough, N. Y,; William Jay, 
of Bedford, N. Y. ; Professor Greenleaf, of Cambridge ; Samuel A. Elliot, of 
Boston; Sidney Willard, of Cambridge; Thomas VV. Ward, of Boston ; Rev. 
William Jenks ; Rev Orville Dewey, ofNew York: Jonathan Chapman; Martin 
Brimmer, of Boston ; Amasa Walker. 

Of a society, composed of such names, subscribing to such a principle, — it 
would be difficult for Southey to repeat the gibe, which he allowed himself to 
utter in his Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 1. 224; " I say 
nothing of the Society for the Abolition of War (Heaven bless the mark !) ; it has 
not obtained sufficient notice even to be in disrepute." 

History furnishes various illustrations of the principle of a Congress of Nations, 
under the name of Councils, Leagues, Diets or Congresses. \. The Amphicty- 
onic Council, embracing at firSt twelve and finally thirty-one states or cities was 
established in the year 497 B. C. Each city sent two deputies, and had two votes 
in the Council, which had fidl power to discuss all differences which might arise 
between the Amphictyonic cities. 2. The Achaan League, founded at a very 
early period, and renewed in 284- B. C. Although each member of the League 
was independent of the others, yet they formed one body, and so great was their 
reputation for justice and probity, tliat the Greek cities of Italy referred disputes 
to their arbitration. 3 Passing over other confederacies of antiquity, we come 
down to the Hanseatic League, begun in the twelfth century and completed near 
the middle of the thirteenth. It comprised at one time nearly eighty cities. A 
system of international law was adopted in their general assemblies. While pur- 
suing a pacific policy, they flourished beyond all precedent. 4. In the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries in Germany, various other cities and nobles entered 
into alliances and associations for mutual protection, under various names, as the 
League of the Rhine, and of Suabia. (Robertson, Hist of Ciiarles V. JNote 21.) 
5. The Helvetic Union began so long ago as 1308, and has preserved peace among 
its members during the greater part of five centuries. It is covenanted by this 
Union that all public dissensions shall be settled between the parties in an amica- 
ble manner; and with this view, particular judges and arbitrators are appointed 
with power to compose any strife that may arise. 6. The Grand Scheme of 
Henry IV, of France, for the blending of the Christian States of Europe in one 
Confederacy, had its rise more in selfish ambition, than in true humanity; but it 
has served to keep before Christendom the idea of the same common tribune 
for the great brotherhood of nations. 7. The United States of America furnish an 
instance of the union of twenty-six different States, all having peculiar interests, 
in bonds of peace, with a tribunal which has jurisdiction over the controversies 
of the States. 

William Penn once said of the schemes of Henry IV, " his example tells us 
that it is fit to be done ; Sir William Temple's History of the United Provinces 
shows, by a surpassing instance, that it may be done ; and Europe, by her incom- 
parable miseries, that it ought to be done." 

It seems, in the order of Providence, that the families, tribes and nations of 
the earth should tend, by means of association, to a final Unity. The seven 
kingdoms of England became one under the Saxon Edgar ; Wales was forcibly 
absorbed into England under Edward 1 ; Ireland, after a protracted resistance, 
was finally absorbed under Edward III; Scotland became connected with England 
by the accession of James I to the throne of the Tudors, and the two countries 



88 

afterwards, under Queen Anne, were united by an act of peaceful legislation. 
The great nations of France and Austria iiave passed through similar stages ; 
disjointed fragments and scattered limbs have been brouglit together ; provinces 
which once possessed an equivocal independence, now feel new power and hap- 
piness in their common union. This is the great process of crystallization, 
which is constantly going on among nations. The next stage will be the associa- 
tion of Christian States. 

Our country possesses peculiar advantages for taking the initiative in the 
diplomatic measures, by which this great event is to be hastened. A Committee 
of Congress, in a Report, ascribed to the late Mr Legare, recommended in 1838, 
" a reference to a third power of all such controversies as can be safely confided 
to any tribunal unknown to the Constitution of our country. Such a practice, 
(say the Committee) will be followed by other powers, and will soon grow up 
into the customary law of civilized nations." The Legislature of JMassachusetts, 
by a series of Resolutions, passed with great unanimity in 1844, declare it their 
" earnest desire that the government of tlie United States would, at the 
earliest opportunity, take measures for obtaining the consent of the powers of 
Christendom to the establishment of a General Convention or Congress of Na- 
tions, for the purpose of settling the principles of international law. and of 
organizing a high court of nations, to adjudge all cases of difficulty which may 
be brought before them by the mutual consent of two or more nations." Mr. 
Jay, in his work on Peace and War, while he foresees the ultimate establishment 
of a Congress of Nations, recommends as a preliminary step the formation of 
Treaties with the different powers of Christendom, providing for the adjustment 
of difficulties by arbitration. 

There is no work to which an American statesman may devote himself, in the 
hope of fame, or in the desire to be of service to the world, that can compare in 
grandeur with the cause which is now most earnestly recommended to all who 
have any influence over the public mind. Let the President of the United States 
ernjiower our ministers at all the Courts to which they are accredited to open 
negotiations at once for this holy purpose. '■ 



NOTE D- 

[Referred to on page 32.] 

Dr. Vinton's Sermon. The sermon of the Rev. Dr. Vinton, pronounced 
before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, is a most disheartening 
production. It is the subtle effort of an excellent mind to reconcile what he 
calls defensive war (he does not show that such a war is possible, in this age, 
among Christian nations) with the injunctions of Cliristianity, severing and 
dividing, as with profane metaphysical scissors, a most intelligible verse of the 
Gospel, wholly neglecting others of great and controlling significance, and seek- 
ing to overturn one of the most blessed truths. The sermon was delivered on a 
public occasion of ceremony, before a military body ; it was voted by the martial 
critics, '• able, eloquent, and interesting," and at their request was printed. It has 
been praised in newspapers; though, to the credit of a wakeful press, which now 
exercises a restraining influence over the clergy, as well as the laity, its perni- 
cious doctrines and its unfair reasoning have already been rebuked by two 
able writers in different journals. It has thus become public property, and as 
such, I venture to dwell on its character. 

This sermon is particularly sinister at this moment, when the country stands 
on the verge of two wars, which will be proclaimed to be defensive in their 
character, though having in them no element of self-defence, and being mere trials 
of title to distant territories. It is also unfair in its peculiar mode of treating the 
question. There is an honest hardihood in the military ardor with which Grotius 
(De jure Belli ac Pacis) and, since him, Mr. Lieber, (Political Ethics), march 
against the direct injunctions of the Saviour, the ip^issima verba of the Gospel, 
treating them as of little or no account, as extravagances or exaggerations. But 
Dr. Vinton founds his defence of war on a single verse of the Gospel, leaving all 
others untouched, and even concealing them from the view. In this way he may 
avoid seeming directly to stultify Him whom he calls Master, by declaring that 
his words do not mean what they seem to mean; that He did not know what he 



89 

meant when he said, " Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shall love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy; but 1 say unto you, Love your enemies;" and 
that Paul iiidujijed in an impracticable extravagance when he said, '■ Overcome 
evil with good." But placing his whole argument upon a single verse, the whole 
superstructure rushes to the earth when the interpretation by which it is supported 
is shown to be inconsistent with the general character and teachings of Christ; 
inconsistent with the fair and natural sense of the words in the English version ; 
utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the plain and grammatical construction of 
the original Greek ; so much so as to lead to the conclusion that Dr. Vinton did 
not refer to the original Greek, or did not understand it. I am indebted to a 
friend, whose name it would be superfluous in me to mention, for the following 
masterly criticism of Dr. Vinton's treatment of this verse. After reading this, no 
person can regard it otherwise than monstrous to found a scriptural defence of so 
great a crime as war on an unfair, ignorant and ungrammatical perversion of a 
few short words in the gospel of peace. 

To those who are desirous of readmg a natural and unanswerable expression 
of the true doctrine of Christianity on the subject of war, where the different 
injunctions of the Saviour seem to come together and arrange themselves, not 
by subtle force, but spontaneously and by divine harmony, I would refer to the 
elaborate work of Dymond on War; to the essay by Gurney, entitled, •' War 
unlawful under the Christian dispensation;" the Address of the Rev. Andrew P. 
Peabody, before the American Peace Society; and the truly Christian sermon of 
Rev. Mr. Bogue, of England. 

If the habit of delivering sermons before a military company should be contin- 
ued, and another Christian minister be found consenting another year to degrade 
the " blessedness " of the gospel to the " blasphemy " of war, 1 hope he will be 
willing to attend to the following points : First, the numerous direct texts in the 
gospel, all of them embracing war in their general condemnation, or enjoining 
peace; second, the character of Christ and his immediate disciples, and the 
question, whether it is possible to suppose Christ, or the youthful John, or even 
the fiery Peter, doing duty as soldiers, either in the militia, or the regular army, 
or preaching sermons in praise of the profession of arms, or riding as chaplains 
of a military parade ; third, the history of the Christian church during the first 
four centuries, showing conclusively that it was then regarded as wrong in a 
Christian to bear arms ; fourth, if any kind of war is consistent with Christianity, 
let him explain precisely what, to the end that its sacred sanctions may not be 
thrown over all wars, — a piratical contest for Texas, or a mere quarrel about the 
title to Oregon; fifth, if he should assert that what are called defensive wars are 
consistent with Christianity, let him explain precisely what is meant by a defen- 
sive war, and show the possibility, — the most distant possibility, — of the occur- 
rence of such a war in this age, among Christian nations; sixth, if he should 
conclude that Christianity forbids all wars, or all wars but defensive wars, while 
it is impossible and monstrous to suppose the case of such a war in our age, let 
him then consider whether all preparations for war are not improper, and whether 
a Christian minister is not justly reprehensible who lends them the sanction of 
his presence. 

The following criticism, which I hasten to present, will render it necessary for 
any successor of Dr. Vinton in the church militant, to occupy a position on some 
other verse of the gospel than that on which he chose to throw up his entrench- 
ments. As the majestic elms on the Boulevards of Paris, affording a generous 
shade to the people, were hewn down to become barricades in tiie Revolution of 
July, so the blessed texts of the gospel, under whose broad and sacred shelter all 
mankind might repose in peace, from generation to generation, are felled to the 
earth, and converted into defences of war. 



The first four pawes of Dr. Vinton's Artillery Election Sermon contain a good 
and Christian-like exposition of the text, " If my kingdom were of this world, 
then would my servants fight." But as this plain and pious course of remark is 
not adapted to the military exigencies of the occasion, it is necessary for the 
sermon to change front, and turn its battery, as it were, upon the position it 
be^an by defending. This manoeuvre, more martial than clerical, is executed by 
substitutinc for the words of the Saviour a paraphrase which contradicts them. 
They have°"an indirect meaning," says Dr. Vinton, and so acting upon the 
principles of Polonius' advice to Lasrtes, he proceeds by "indirections to "find 
directions out." " Their paraphrase," he continues, would be thus : " If my 

12 



90 

kinsidom were of the sort which my enemies supposed, if the object of my 
government were specially to establish personal security, to promote social 
comfort, or to maintain national independence, or any other objects for which 
human governments are formed, then it would be both necessary and right to 
resist the injustice which has delivered me to this tribunal." 

The formal division of the Scriptures into minute portions, called verses, gives 
great license to ingenious misinterpretation, and is the occasion of much ecclesi- 
astical sophistry. The preacher takes a sentence, clause, or even a single phrase 
out of its connection, and instead of interpreting it in the broad light of the 
general truths of Christianity, wrests it from the combination in which it stands, 
and makes it the theme of a sermon. Like the ancient Sophists he can thus 
sustain any side of any question. " Hang all the law and prophets " is a familiar 
and ludicrous instance of textual perversion ; but it is not more untenable and 
distorted than the graver paraphrase on which Dr. Vinton has founded the main 
part of his discourse. Where did he learn that the language of Christ contains 
such double and contradictory meanings as his paraphrase superinduces upon the 
te.tt? that besides the idea which the Saviour's words obviously e.\pressed, there 
was an arriere pensf'e, a sort of mental reservation, to be drawn out ages after 
they were spoken, but sealed against the understanding of the man to whom they 
were addressed by the living tongue ? 

The first thing that strikes the mind on reading the paraphrase is, that this 
interpretation puts into the mouth of the Lord a platitude and a paralogism. For 
on such an occasion it would have been a very inept proceeding to enter even by 
implication upon a general political thesis. Next it would have been an extraor- 
dinary piece of logic to affirm that force might rightly be used in establishing 
organizations so imperfect as human governments always have been, and so 
irreligious in their practices, and yet that it would not be right to use force to 
protect the perfect innocence and godlike sanctity of Christ, in his labors to 
reform and save the world. If force could be rightly used in the former case, it 
might a foitiori be rightly used in the latter, if wars may rightly be waged in 
defence or support of the imperfect and the sinful, they may for still stronger 
reasons be rightly waged for the perfect and the sinless. 

The circumstances under which Christ addressed to Pontius Pilate the 
remarkable words, " My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of 
this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the 
Jews," place their meaning beyond a doubt. 

The Savfour, well knowing that his ministry on earth was nearly finished, had 
met his disciples and delivered to them his last and most affecting instructions. 
In the mean time the Jewish authorities, the Priests, and Pharisees, and Scribes, 
whose hardened hearts had been pierced, and whose hypocritical lives had been 
rebuked by the divine teachings of the Son of Man, corrupted the fidelity of one 
of his professed followers, who agreed for a sum of money to betray his master 
into their hands. Wrought up to fury by Christ's searching denunciations, which 
their consciences had been utterly helpless to gainsay, they were resolved to 
shed his blood, be the means and the consequences what they might. To make 
sure of their victim they called in the aid of a military band, the ready instruments 
of every deed of wickedness and blood; and appointing the traitor, Judas Iscariot, 
their guide, despatched them in martial array to steal upon the holiest of the 
messengers of God in the silence and retirement of the night, and to arrest him, 
with every circumstance of insult, like a vulgar malefactor. But when the 
myrmidons of guilt and hate were led by the betrayer into the presence of that 
mysterious man, unable to stand before the terrors of his countenance, " thev 
went backward and fell to the ground." Overcoming at length the awe which 
had struck them powerless, the rude soldiery laid their hands on Jesus and bound 
him. They conducted him first to the house of Annas, and then arraigned him 
before Caiaphas, the high priest of that year. At the palace of this priest, the 
Sanhedrim, or Supreme Council of the Jewish nation, consisting of the bitterest 
foes of Jesus, who were bent with unpitying rage upon his murder, was hurriedly 
assembled ; and the brief and passionate debate ended with the predetermined 
judgment of death. But the Jews were under a foreign yoke. Judea was but a 
province added by conquest to the vast empire of Rome. A procurator, repre- 
senting the imperial power, was stationed as governor at Jerusalem. Knowing 
the obstinate and rebellious character of the people, it was his duty to^watch 
with sleepless eye every sign of insubordination in the conquered province. 
Without his sanction, no capital sentence could be carried into execution. And 
so the procession formed anew, priests, and rabbis, and the martial array, to 
conduct the serene and unresisting victim to the judgment hall of Pilate. This 



91 

company, stranger than was ever assembled before or since in the history of the 
world, approached the Roman tribunal just as the morning was breakint^ over the 
dread scene. The tragedy of the Saviour's life, crowded with eternal consequen- 
ces to the happiness of man, was swiftly drawing towards its catastrophe. His 
enemies, maddened by unreasoning hatred, shrank not from the foulest means to 
bring about their fell intent; and incident after incident in the awful drama, 
pregnant with inappreciable significance for the destiny of the human soul, 
pressed the great action forward with startling rapidity. 

The Jews resolved to employ the easily excited jealousy of the Roman governor 
to strike their victim down. To accomplish their fiendish purpose the more 
readily, they charged him with a political design against the sovereign power; a 
design, which in their gross conceptions of the predicted Messiah, they imagined 
and hoped he would appear on earth to execute ; an imagination and a hope 
which the language and actions of Christ had pointedly contradicted again and 
again, and thus added to the exasperation which they felt, on other grounds, 
against his person. They charged him, in effect, with a conspiracy against the 
Imperial power; with intending to make himself a king and to shake off the 
Roman yoke; and to substantiate this treasonous charge, they dishonestly 
perverted the figurative language which they had heard him use on several occa- 
sions. They could not enter the pretorium with their destined victim, because 
the feast of the passover was near at hand, and they desired to eat of it, which 
they could not religiously do, if they went in, — good, pious men that they were, 
— but they could knowingly forge a lie, and for the sake of shedding innocent 
blood, swear falsely to a crime which, by the Roman law, was punishable with an 
ignominious death upon the cross. Pilate having listened outside of the hall to 
the accusation so insidiously shaped and adapted to rouse all his Roman fears, 
suspicions and prejudices against the prisoner, re-entered the pretorium and 
questioned him upon this very point- What was Christ's answer? A positive, 
intelligible asseveration, as plain as words could express any thought of the 
mind, and as exclusive of the possibility of any supposed indirect or hidden 
meaning, as the most transparent singleness of heart could make it : " My king- 
dom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my 
servants fight for me that I might not be delivered to the Jews." All these words 
of the Saviour are limited by the last clause, " That 1 might not be delivered to 
the Jews," to his own case; nor, whatever their meaning may be, can they be 
tortured by any ingenious sophistry into a general thesis, express or implied, 
upon the rightfulness of sustaining government by force, still less into an author- 
itative sanction of any kind of war. What Christ said, he meant; no more, and 
no less. Pilate understood his words, and was satisfied of his innocence. But 
if Christ had said what the preacher's paraphrase represents him to have indirectly 
implied, Pilate could not possibly have gone out and declared to the Jews that 
he found no fault in him ; for Pilate must have understood him to mean, that 
though as a matter of fact, he entertained no such design as was charged upon 
him by the Jews, still had he been a temporal leader, he might rightfully have 
maintained his cause by an appeal to arms ; that is, under the peculiar circum- 
stances of the case, Pilate must have understood Christ to maintain and declare a 
set of political or patriotic principles wholly at variance with submission to the 
Roman Supremacy. Looking at the case, then, from the Roman point of view, 
and under a sense of weighty responsibility to the central power whose delegate 
he was, he would have said to the Jews, with perfect truth, " I cannot, indeed, 
find that this man has been guilty of any overt act of rebellion ; but he is a dan- 
gerous person and disloyal to Rome ; he declares, that were he a temporal prince 
he might rightfully draw the sword. When he says that his kingdom is not of 
this world, he is doubtless making a cunning fetch to extricate himself from the 
present danger. It is a distinction without a difference. I am not to be cheated 
with these fraudulent subtleties. The principles he professes to my face, would 
justify him in rebelling whenever he might think he possessed the ability to 
command success. It is my duty to Rome to put him out of the way. Do with 
him what you will." But Pilate drew no such meaning from the Saviour's 
words ; he saw with perfect clearness into the true state of the case, and told the 
Jews, not that he could discover no act f'^yor, but that he perceived no fault, or 
ground of charge, air lav ^ against the prisoner, and with importunate eagerness 
urged them to let him go The Jews could not help perceiving that their attempt 
to fasten upon Christ a political crime had so far failed, nor did they until some 
time afterwards repeat the charge, but in the senseless, brutal rabidness of disap- 
pointed malice, shrieked out, " Crucify him, crucify bim. We have a law, and 
by our law he ought to die, because he has made himself a Son of God." 



92 

If Christ meant what the paraphrase makes him to imply, he was guilty of a 
dishonest trick ; a Jesuitical playing with the ambiguities of human speech. This 
conclusion any reader, of common sense, must arrive at, upon a careful consider- 
ation and comparison of the incidents in the marvellous history. But an exami- 
nation of the Greek original of the passage in which these transactions are related 
makes assurance doubly sure. The interpretation of Dr. Vinton will be defended 
by no tolerable Greek scholar on philological or hermeneutic grounds. The 
words are, *' 'H ^uadelu 7) i/ur^ uvx tanv ix loi) xnajjOi' idvTOV. El 
hx ToD xoajxov roviov f^i' ») ^aatleiu ■>) i/nii, ol inr/oeTui, iii' ol ifiol 
rr/wxi^ovTO, 2vu fi^ nuquSodta loT; lovduioig- vvv de tJ Sitaiketa 1) 
iur\ovx eoTiP l^t'ievdei'." Itshouldbe remarked,_^rs<, that the preposition £Xj 
translated in our English version of, means/j-oni, and denotes origm from a place 
or source; second, that the two expressions on which the sense of the passage 
depends, each being qualified, one by the particle £t, the other by the particle (i*'^ 
stand to each other in the relation of conditioning asid conditioned cldixses; third, 
that the verbs fjv and r.yojri'^ot'io are in the indicative mode ; fourth, that they 
are in the imperfect tense ; And fifth, that the word xoaijov, world, is used by 
the sacred writers in a bad sense, as contrasted with goodness, piety or God. 
Literally translated, then the passage would run, '• My kingdom is not from this 
world; if my kingdom were from this world, then my servants would fight that [ 
might not be delivered to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from hence." 
Expanding the language, not for the sake of paraphrasing, but of illustrating it, 
the sense may be thus expressed : " My authority does not, like that of temporal 
rulers, originate in this evil world ; if my authority did originate in this world, like 
that of temporal rulers, then (as a matter of fact, not of right, ^1/ h/oiri'jifio^ 
indicative mode) would my servants be fighting now (imperfect tense) to defend 
me from my enemies. But my kingdom is from a higher source; my kingdom is 
a spiritual authority, bestowed on me by the Heavenly Father. 1 am the Prince 
of Peace. I have nothing to do with violence, rebellion and war ; but my mission 
is to teach those doctrines which will for ever put an end to violence, rebellion 
and war. Were it otherwise, I should not be standing before thy tribunal, in this 
lowly guise and apparently helpless condition ; but sword in hand, like other 
temporal chieftains, 1 should be leading armed cohorts, and drenching the earth 
in blood. But I say again, my authority comes not from hence; and deeds like 
these have no sanction from me or from my doctrines." 

The laws of the language imperatively require this construction. The princi- 
ples of interpretation, which Pilate instinctively applied, require it. Had the verbs 
in the two selected clauses been in the optative mode, ejer and txyon't'^oii'TO, 
then a correct translation would have been, " If my kingdom were of this world, 
then might my servants fight," though even in this case, the rightfulness of fight- 
ing would not necessarily be inferred. To justify such an interpretation, even 
with the optative mode, the verb (xYO)rl'Qon'ro, might fi^ht, would need to be 
qualified by the adverb oQU)6wg or dtxaiuK, rightly or justly. 

The thoughtless paraphrase in the Artillery Election Sermon is an example of 
that ecclesiastical sophistry which in all ages of the Christian church, except the 
earliest, has struggled, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, to abase 
the lofty principles of the gospel to the low standard of the existing contemporary 
world. 



93 
NOTE E. 

[Referred to on page 40.] 

Dr. Wayland's Views on War.— When the foregoing Oration was delivered 
1 wns not aware that its principles were sustained so entirely by an authority like 
Dr. Wayland, in a work, Elements of Moral Science, which, it is grateful to know, 
enjoys an immense circulation, and cannot fail, therefore, to exercise an important 
influence over the youth of the country. It is with great pleasure that 1 make 
the following extract, to which 1 invite the particular attention of the reader: — 

" Let us suppose a nation to abandon all means, both of offence and of defence, 
to lay aside all power of inflicting injury, and to rel/for self-preservation solely 
upon the justice of its own conduct, and" the moral effect which such a course of 
conduct would produce upon the consciences of men. How would such a nation 
procure redress of grievances ? and how would it be protected from foreign aggres- 
sion. 

" I. Of redress of grievances. Under this head would be comprehended vio- 
lation of treaties, spoliation of properly, and ill-treatment of its citizens. I reply, 

" 1. The very fact that a nation relied solely upon the justice of its measures, 
and the benevolence of its conduct, would do more than any thing else to prevent 
the occurrence of injury. The moral sentiment of every human community 
would rise in opposition to injury inflicted upon the just, the kind, and the 
merciful. Thus, by this course, the probabilities of aggression are rendered as 
few as the nature of man will permit. 

"2. But suppose injury to be done. I reply, the proper appeal for moral beings 
upon moral questions, is not to physical force, but to the consciences of men. 
Let the wrong be set forth, but be set forth in the spirit of lovej and in this 
manner, if in any, will the consciences of men be aroused to justice. 

"3. But suppose this method to fail Why, then, let us suffer the injury. This 
is the preferable evil of the two. Because they have injured us a little, it does 
not follow that we should injure ourselves much. But it will be said, what is 
then to become of our national honor ? 1 answer, first, if we have acted justly, 
we surely are not dishonored. The dishonor rests upon those who have done 
wickedly. I answer again, national honor is displayed in forbearance, in forgive- 
ness, in requiting faithlessness with tidelity, and grievances with kindness and 
good-will. These virtues are surely as delightful and as honorable in nations as 
in individuals. 

" But it may be asked, what is to prevent repeated and continued aggression ? 
1 answer, first, not instruments of destruction, but the moral principle which God 
has placed in the bosom of every man. I think that obedience to the law of God, 
on the part of the injured, is the surest preventive against the repetition of injury. 
I answer, secondly, suppose that acting in obedience to the law of benevolence 
will not prevent the repetition of injury, will acting upon the principle of retalia- 
tion prevent it ? This is really the true question. The evil tempers of the 
human heart are allowed to exist, and we are inquiring in what manner shall we 
suffer the least injury from them; whether by obeying the law of benevolence, or 
that of retaliation? It is not necessary, therefore, to show, that by adopting the 
law of benevolence, we shall not suffer at all, but that, by adopting it, we shall 
suffer Zfss than by the opposite course; and that a nation would actually thus 
suffer less upon the whole, than by any other course, cannot, I think, be doubted 
by any one who will calmly reflect upon the subject. 

" II. How would such a nation be protected from external attack and entire 
subjugation? 1 answer, by adopting the law of benevolence, a nation would 
render such an event in the highest degree improbable. The causes of national 
war are most commonly, the love of plunder, and the love of glory. The first of 
these is rarely, if ever, sufficient to stimulate men to the ferocity necessary to 
war, unless when assisted by the second. And by adopting as the rule of our 
conduct the law of benevolence, all motive arising from the second cause is taken 
away. There is not a nation in Europe that could be led on to war against a 
harmless, just, forgiving and defenceless people. 

" But suppose such a case really should occur, what are we then to do? I 
answer, suffer injury with forgiveness and love, looking up to God, who, in his 
holy habitation, is the Judge of the whole earth. And if it be said, we shall 
then all be subjected and enslaved, I answer again, have wars prevented men 



94 

from being subjected and enslaved ? Is there a nation on the continent of Europe 
that has not been overrun by foreign troops several times, even within the present 
century ? And still more, is it not most commonly the case, that the very means 
by which we repel a despotism from abroad, on^y establishes over us a military 
despotism at home 1 Since, then, the principle of retaliation will not, with any 
certainty, save a country from conquest, the real question, as before, is, By 
obedience to which law will a nation be most likely to escape it, by the law of 
retaliation, or by that of benevolence ? It seems to me that a man who will 
calmly reflect, can have but little doubt on this matter. 

" But I go still farther. The Scriptures teach us that God has created men, 
both as individuals and as societies, under the law of benevolence; and that he 
intends this law to be obeyed. Societies have never yet thought of obeying it in 
their dealings with each other; and statesmen would generally consider the 
allusion to it as puerile. But this alters not the law of God, nor the punishment 
which he inflicts upon nations for the violation of it. This punishment I suppose 
to be war. i believe aggression from a foreign nation to be the intimation from 
God that we are disobeying the law of benevolence, and that this is his mode of 
teaching nations their duty, in this respect, to each other So that aggression 
seems to me to be in no manner a call to retaliation and injury, but rather a call 
to special kindness and good-will. And still farther, the requiting evil with good 
tends just as strongly to the cessation of all injury, in nations as in individuals. 
Let any man reflect upon the amount of pecuniary expenditure, and the awful 
waste of human life, which the wars of the last hundred years have occasioned, 
and then 1 will ask him whether it be not self-evident, that the one-hundredth 
part of this expense and suffering, if employed in the honest effort to render 
mankind wiser and better, would, long before this time, have banished wars from 
the earth, and rendered the civilized world like the garden of Eden. 

"If this bo true, it will follow that the cultivation of a military spirit is the 
cultivation of a great curse to a community; and that all means, both of offence 
and defence, are worse than useless, inasmuch as they aggravate the very source 
of the evil, the corrupt passions of the human heart, by the manner in which they 
ineffectually attempt to check the evil itself. 

" I am aware that all this may be called visionary, romantic and chimerical. 
This, however, neither makes it so, nor shows it to be so. The time to apply 
these epithets will be, when the justness of their application has been proved. 
And if it be said, these principles may all be very true, but you can never induce 
nations to act upon them; I answer, this concession admits thit such is the law 
of God. If this be the case, that nation will be the happiest and the wisest which 
is the first to obey it. And if it be said, it would be wisest and best to obey the 
law of benevolence, but men will never obey it, I answer, here is manifestly the 
end of the argument. If we show men what is wisest and best, and according to 
the will of their Creator, we can do no more. If they disobey it, this is a matter 
to be settled between them and their God. It remains, however, to be seen, 
whether God will or will not cause his laws to be obeyed ; and whether Omnis- 
cience and Omnipotence have not the means of teaching his creatures submission 
to his will." — pp. 397-401. 



NOTE F. 

[Referred to on page 64.] 

The following beautiful anecdote from the second series of Mrs. Child's 
Letters from New York, — the production of a brave and beautiful soul, — furnishes 
an instructive illustration of the text : 

" I have somewhere read of a regiment ordered to march into a small town and 
take it. I think it was in the Tyrol ; but wherever it was, it chanced that the 
place was settled by a colony who believed the gospel of Christ, and proved their 
faith by works. A courier from a neighboring village informed them that troops 
were advancing to take the town. They quietly answered, ' If they wUt take it, 
they must ' Soldiers soon came riding in, with colors flying, and fifes piping 
their shrill defiance. They looked round for an enemy, and saw the farmer at 
his plough, the blacksmith at his anvil, and the women at their churns and spin- 
ning-wheels. Babies crowded to hear the music, and the boys ran out to see the 



95 

pretty trainers, with feathers and bright buttons, ' the harlequins of the nineteenth 
century.' Of course none of these were in a proper position to be shot at. 
' Where are your soldiers ? ' they asked. ' We have none,' was the brief reply. 
' But we have come to take the town.' ' Well, friends, it lies before you ' ' But 
is there nobody here to fight '.' ' ' No ; we are all Christians." 

" Here was an emergency altogether unprovided for ; a sort of resistance which 
no bullet could hit ; a fortress perfectly bomb-proof The commander was per- 
plexed ' If there is nobody to fight with, of course we cannot fight,' said he. 
' It is impossible to take such a town as this.' So he ordered the horses' heads 
to be turned about, and they carried the human animals out of the village, as 
guiltless as they entered, and perchance somewhat wiser. 

" This e.^periment on a small scale indicates how easy it would be to dispen.<!e 
with armies and navies, if men only had faith in the religion they profess to 
believe. When France lately reduced her army, England immediately did the 
same ; for the existence of one army creates the necessity for another, unless 
men are safely esconced in the bomb-proof fortress above mentioned." 



NOTE G. 

[Referred to on page 70.] 

The following extracts from two different sources, will show that private per- 
sons once lived in relations of distrust towards each other, similar to those of 
nations of the present day. The first extract is from the Paston Letters, written 
in the time of Henry VII of England, and is, perhaps, the most curious and 
authentic illustration of the armed life of that period which can be found. The 
other is from Sir Walter Scott's picturesque Lay of the Last Minstrel. Who 
does not rejoice that such days have passed ? Who will not join in labors to 
establish among nations the same harmonious, unarmed intercourse which now 
prevails among individuals ? 

" Right worshipful husband, I recommend me to you, and pray you to get me 
some cross-bows and wyndnacs* (windlasses), to bind them with and quarrels,! 
for your houses here be so low that there may none man shoot out with no long 
bow, though we had never so much need. 

I suppose ye should have such things of Sir John Fastolf if ye would send to 
him ; and also 1 would ye should get two or three short pole axes to keep with 
fin] doors, and as many jackets and [if] ye may. 

Partrich and his fellowship are sore afraid that ye would enter again upon them, 
and they have made great ordnance within the house, and it is told me that they 
have made bars to bar the doors crosswise, and they have made wickets on every 
quarter of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and with hand-guns ; and 
the holes that be made from hand-guns they be scarce knee high from the 
plancher yioor]. and of such holes be made five, there can none man shoot out 
at them with no hand-bows." Paston Letters, CXIII, (LXXVH. vol. 3, p. 3[.) 
Margaret Paston to her husband. 

Nine-and-twenty knights of fame 

Hung their shields in the Branksome hall; 

JNine-and-twenty squires of name 

Brought them their steeds from bower to stall ; 

]Nine-and-twenty yeomen tall 

Waited, duteous, on them all : 

They were all knights of metal true, 

Kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch. 

Ten of them were sheathed in steel, 
With belted sword, and spur on heel; 
They quitted not (he harness bright, 
Neither by day, nor yet by night ; 

* Wyndnacs are what called grappling irons, with which the bow-string is drawn 
home. 

t Arrows with a square head. 



96 

They lay down to rest, 

With corselet laced, 
Pillowed on buckler cold and hard ; 

They carved at the meal 

With gloves of steel, 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred. 

Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men, 
Waited the beck of the warders ten; 
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight. 
Stood saddled in stable day and night, 
Barbed with frontlet of steel 1 trow, 
And with Jedwood axe at saddle bow; 
A hundred more fed free in stall : 
Such was the custom at Branksome hall 

Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto \. 



W. S. DAMRELL, PRINTER, 11 CORNHILL. 



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HECKMAN IXI 
BINDERY INC. |M| 

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